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C of E Churchmanship Project - comments sought !

18 month Project Report for part-time PhD :

 

One Church, several cultures: the composition and cultural reproduction of the contemporary Church of England.

As amended from:

One Church, Two Cultures: the composition and cultural reproduction of contemporary Anglicanism:

                                                                                                                                        

Part 1) Introduction: Towards a research question.

Part 2) Literature Review:

a)      Secularization Studies i) General ii) In Britain

b)      Sources of Church studies

c)      A recent history of the Church

d)     Churchmanship Studies.

Part 3) Methods and Work Plan

Part 4) References

 

Abstract: This project report aims to outline the rationale, background, methods and work plans for a study of the Church or England according to its “churchmanship” groups. These are the groups and sub-groups based around the Church’s traditions of Evangelical, Catholic, Liberal, and Charismatic. In recent years it seems that outsiders largely hear about Church by way of such sub-cultures. This is in part due to high profile disputes reported in the media, such as  ones over homosexuality that have divided along Evangelical/ Liberal lines, and also marketing campaigns such as Alpha, which, although flexible, promotes an essentially Charismatic Evangelical style of Anglicanism. In my study I aim to see whether outside perceptions of the Church really are divided according to churchmanship lines and ask whether the Church can be grouped this way at local leadership and congregational levels.

 

Part 1) Introduction: Towards a research question.

 

 

This study aims to analyse and compare public (principally media) perceptions of the Church of England in relation to the beliefs and practices of parish clergy and their congregations. In particular it employs the concept of “churchmanship” as the category of analysis

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines churchmanship as the “attitude, belief or practice of a churchman”. It is a concept that whilst it applies to differences in any church is in many ways an especially Anglican phenomenon. Since the earliest days of the post-Reformation Church of England, the Church has existed in a state of tension between various tendencies or ethos cultures. This feature of the Church of England and Anglicanism[1] - its rival traditions, including those sometimes called High, Low and Broad, or as the C of E website puts it, Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal  -are  explored in the many histories of the Church (cf J R D Moorman’s A History of the Church in England (1980) or Mark Chapman’s A Very short History of Anglicanism (2006)). Specific studies dedicated to churchmanship have also tended to start from the perspective of the historical traditions of the Church. Churchmanship is not a well defined term, but at the very widest applies to the broad traditions  (High Low and Broad) and at the most specific one of a number of organized parties within the church with specific beliefs and practices[2]. The academic literature indicates a split between those who prefer to see churchmanship as a position in a multi-axis spectrum and others who prefer to conceive of it as belonging to any one of a number of tribes or parties, traditions and sub-traditions.  In this study we will be using both approaches.

Although churchmanship groups relate to Church of England and Anglican identity, their presence highlights the fact of division in a way that “identity” does not. Division has been very much the focus of the media depiction of the Church of England and Anglican Communion over the past decade.

Randall writes: “The Church of England has been pictured as torn apart by divisions – behind many of these divisions lie sharp differences between Anglicans, which are collected together under the shorthand term, churchmanship” (Randall 2005 p ix). The divisions he refers to come from a media picture that has the Church split almost to the point of schism along churchmanship lines by fierce rows over attitudes to homosexuality and female leadership with Conservative Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics seen to clash with Liberals and Liberal-Catholics.

Of course Anglican identity can be explored through unifying beliefs and practices and institutions of the Anglican Communion. Avis (2000), Podmore (2005) and Sykes (1987) give various expositions of this and Mark Chapman (2006  p120), explains the unifying Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral established in 1888, which spelt out the four cardinal instruments of union. Yet, last year in 2008 one of the prime institutions intended to uphold and reflect these instruments, the Lambeth Conference, was challenged by the establishment of a rival conference, GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) which threatened to undermine Anglican unity. With the divisions in the Anglican Communion so prominent it is easy to see why the points of division now seem more urgent than the unifying aspects of the communion.

 Within the Church of England we see the same story. Whereas commentators may and do analyse the Church according to points of unity - Martin Davie’s “Guide to the Church of England “(2008 pp59-74 and 80-106), for example, discusses governance,  establishment and  doctrine – there is a real sense of crisis in public discourse, which suggests that to understand the Church we may need to concentrate on the discord. For example, approximately a year ago the Times ran a front page headline “Church in meltdown over Women and Gays” (Ruth Gledhill (16/6/08) ), and around this time a dissenting group modeled after GAFCON, called FOCA (Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans) was been established. From media reports at least, it seems that it is the groups at the centre of these rows are as important to understanding the C of E as the overall system that keeps the groups together in the one church.

Existing churchmanship studies have  predominately been through samples of clergy and there has been little work to date on how these groups shape outside perceptions of Anglican identity and character, nor on how the churchmanship groups apply to the identity of congregations – both their self identity and how they might be categorized. It is here that I wish to fill a gap. The core of my study is a comparison between outside perceptions of the Church, as seen in public media discourse, as compared with empirical analyses at congregational and local leadership levels. These studies will deal with identity issues according to churchmanship categories.

 As I am intending to compare perceptions against empirical study and reality, the first logical step in my study is to interrogate outside public perceptions, using a combination of discourse analysis (of written texts and broadcasts) and empirical research  Thus I wish to question whether the portrayal of the church as divided between traditionalists and liberals over matters of female leadership and homosexuality does in fact constitute “common understanding”, within or outside of the church?  The second step is to conduct an analysis of the sub-culture types in the church, to establish a system of churchmanship groups grounded in existing studies and in my own research. Here I wish to analyse, both in respect of how outsiders see “churchmen” and congregations, and how the latter groups see themselves. Thirdly I intend to conduct a qualitative, largely ethnographic, study of a reasonable spread of the Church sub-cultures, selected according to sub-culture to give the congregations’ “views from the pews” (i.e to be as typographically if not numerically representative as possible).

There are various audiences to whom I believe such research will be of interest. To begin with, with so much recent talk of schism within the Church, there seems to be great interest in current Church trends amongst many in the Church (and related parties). Secondly, from a larger sociological perspective, information relating to beliefs and practices of the English established Church, may be of interest to analysts of civil society – the Church represents a considerable volunteer force, and moral lobby. (cf Herbert Religion and Civil Society 2003). However within the field of the sociology of religion, the value of this material may be most significant in the area of secularization studies – the dominant area of study in the sociology of religion.

Secularization studies look at religious trends, and such studies are currently split as to whether this Britain is becoming increasingly secularized (cf Bruce 1995)  or only appearing to become increasingly secularized as religion becomes “privatised” (cf Davie 1994). Several scholars have noted that religion in the UK seems to be shifting generally to the “right” (cf Bruce 1995 p67-70, Davie 1994 p8 Beckford 2003 p55) – which would mean in terms of my churchmanship analysis, a predicted relative success in vitality of forms of conservative evangelicalism.  However, secularization studies are largely dependent on a limited supply of statistics and other indicators such as broadcast media and literature. Congregational studies are particularly sparse, although there are a number of clergy studies (cf Daniel 1967, Towler and Coxon 1979. Randall 2005) There are also studies such as the European Values Study (Barker, Halman, Vloet 1992) that survey general public attitudes.

There are three levels of analysis in which I intend to engage.  The first is the national media, which, at the headline level at least, between 1998 and 2008, has presented a narrative of the Church of England as one of division between three groups at odds over issues of female leadership and attitudes towards homosexuality. Secondly, there is the local leadership level, whose discourses seem to be served by  trade media – Church newspapers and the like - as supplemented by “new media” (internet blogs etc). This is the level that internet message boards[3] and, existing clergy studies indicate might be the most fully divided into a well-defined series of  between six and nine sub-cultures[4].  The last and the hardest to ascertain is the actual beliefs of concerns, beliefs and attitudes of congregations. Here I shall be especially interested to see how appropriate churchmanship categories are in discussing the beliefs and practices of Church of England congregations and how they shape churchgoers’ self-identity.

One proposed research question, following directly from the above, and thus emphasising the aspect of displacement between perceptions at the macro level and realities at the micro level is:

How do public perceptions of the divisions within the Church of England match local leadership beliefs and attitudes and how do these in turn match the views of the congregations?

The issue of sub-culture and how it relates to perceptions and self perceptions in the C of E is so central, however, another way of expressing the question might be:

How does the concept of churchmanship relate to perceptions and self perceptions of the C of E at national leadership, local leadership and congregational levels.?

The second formulation is preferable in that it unifies the project under a single overarching frame of interrogation – that of churchmanship.

 

Part 2) Literature Review:

 

There are four areas I wish to cover in the literature survey. The first is secularization theory, about which I want to outline the key concepts and the local application. Secondly I wish to critically outline what sources are available to build up a picture of the contemporary church, (and to explain where my research would fit in). Thirdly I will give a brief recent history of the Church which will contextualise the fourth and final review, that of existing churchmanship studies

Secularization Theory:

Norris and Inglehart (Norris, Inglehart 2004 p1) tell us:

The seminal social thinkers of the nineteenth century ……… all believed that religion would gradually fade in importance and cease to be significant with the advent of industrial society. …. The death of religion was the conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth century; indeed it has been regarded as the master model of sociological inquiry.

However secularization theory, that theory that religion would decline, has attracted widespread criticism and challenge in recent years. If it was once the master model of sociological inquiry it would seem for many to be a model that is truly outmoded. It seems that the passage of time, the spread of sociological enquiry across the globe, and the increasing sophistication of sociological methodology has simply created too many counter examples. Herbert puts the problem thus:

here is the source of the confusion: modernization is held to cause secularization, and modernization is a worldwide process. Yet religion is not in decline everywhere. On the contrary.. Rather, there are many signs of both new and continuing vitality.(Herbert, 2003 p6)

 But, it is not simply the case that evidence of continuing vitality challenges the idea that religion is in decline. It is also the case that existing data is often insufficiently clear and unambiguous to be able to read the trends. Nowhere is this more apparent than Britain where two key theorists, Steve Bruce and Grace Davie interpret the same data and indicators to opposite conclusions (cf Bruce 1995 with Davie 1994). Insofar as my study contributes to secularization data, I will be aiming to add an understanding  of media  discourses, and to add to the existing statistical data by adding an extra layer of analysis to the category of churchgoers:  That is to say I will be distinguishing between those people who are statistically lumped together as practising Anglicans but who sociologically might be substantially different creatures.

 Already within secularization studies there is some sense of churchmanship sub-culture analysis insofar as there exist various findings that evangelical and charismatic forms of Christianity fare better than moderate forms. (cf Bruce 1995 p67-70, Davie 1994 p8 Beckford 2003 p55). However although such studies may indicate relative fortunes, we do not find much analysis of what is entailed in being a member of a particular churchmanship group.

The literature also shows an awareness of the particular unique significance of England’s established Church (cf Beckford 2003 p55, Davie 1994 139-159), yet we do not know a great deal about its composition or the levels of understanding amongst the congregations about the churchmanship to which they seem to belong. Nor do we know within the Church, whether it really is the style of religious interpretation that attracts church members to one particular expression of Anglicanism, rather than factors such as location, successful marketing or the provision of community facilities, or even of childcare facilities? 

Before positioning the work I intend to undertake within the canon of British secularization studies, I would like to briefly recap some key concepts within a general historical framework.

Amongst the classical thinkers, referred to by Norris and Inglehart,(2004 p1) Max Weber’s thinking on secularization (1930 reprint 2007) has left the most enduring legacy.  (Furseth and Repstad 2006 p34-37, Giddens 1989 p538).  For Weber the success or otherwise of religious ideas was linked to the general plausibility of such ideas in the context of other religious and scientific ideologies. It was his belief that in the long term, religion would diminish in terms of its plausibility as science increasingly produced alternative explanations of various phenomena.  Specifically Weber provided an account of how rationalization – the adoption of scientific explanations – squeezes out religion.

But what exactly is meant by secularization? In the broadest terms secularization is the removal of religious influence. Bryan Wilson puts it, “that process by which religious institutions, actions, and consciousness lose their social significance” (Wilson 1966 p 14). The three main cluster of ideas surrounding pro-secularization theories are, differentiation, societalization, and rationalization. These are seen as sub-divisions of modernization. This is a process seen as starting at the reformation and accelerating after the enlightenment (Herbert 2003 p 27) Differentiation refers to the separating out of different areas of social function; for instance government, legislature, education and  medicine which were once all under the control of the overarching religious system. Societaliztion refers to the changing patterns of community living, from local to urban and from neighbourhood to national identification. Rationalization is the adoption of scientific methods and standards as the general arbiter of truth. It may be seen to challenge religion directly and indirectly: directly when new ideas are thought to “disprove” old ideas, indirectly, when new ideas make old ones redundant (Herbert 2003 p27-30).

Some more recent thinkers have concentrated on contemporary factors. In order to contain this summary to the British position, I am not going to expand on ideas such as “deprivatization” (Casanova 1994) or other theories that reflect predominately on the global stage. However I will briefly outline some theory that whilst it falls outside of the key positions on which I will be concentrating, still relates to British sociological religious studies.

 Rational Choice Theory (RCT) revolves around two central concepts. Firstly, that the existential condition of humankind creates a constant demand for religious explanations, and secondly, that when the supply side responds to that demand, then we will see increasing religious behavior. There is plenty of supply in our modern times and RCT theorists such as Rodney Stark find plenty of evidence for religiosity too. (Herbert 2003 p32) The work of Stark has been extensively counter-argued by Steve Bruce (e.g 2002 pp5, 42, 62-63), who considers Stark’s statistics and indicators unreliable.

Some thinkers have also looked at changing religious patterns through the lens of post-modern analysis, notably Richard Inglehart and Zygmunt Bauman (Herbert 2003 p 33). Inglehart finds post-modern conditions of changing meta-narratives and global communications bad for traditional forms of religion and more fertile for newer forms of religion and spirituality (Inglehart 1997 from Herbert p34). Bauman feels that postmodern conditions allow fundamentalist beliefs to allow believers to enjoy the benefits of modern society without paying the price (Bauman 1998;p74). Insofar as there may be an overlap between Bauman’s fundamentalist categories and the conservative churchmanship groups that both  Bruce and Davie (Bruce 1995 p67, Davie 1994 p 8) identify as faring disproportionately well, such an analysis may give an alternative explanation for this phenomenon.

Bruce and Davie two of the best known commentators on patterns of religious behavior and decline in the UK currently writing, have contrasting opinions. Bruce is known as a proponent of “classical secularization theory” (Davie 2003 p13), and in this regard largely follows in the tradition of Weber (Bruce 2002 p2). Davie is best known for her analysis of religious behaviour in the UK as being “vicarious religion” or “believing without belonging” – that is to say that religious behavior has declined at the institutional level, but that there is still significant evidence for continued religious vitality at the private level. (Beckford 2003 p53-55) We might also describe this as religious metamorphosis. In other words the notion that, religious behavior doesn’t disappear; it merely becomes redirected. Such an idea of metamorphosis is echoed in the work of Heelas and Woodhead (Heelas and Woodhead 2005) who see the contemporary situation as providing conditions for a shift from objective religious systems that concentrate on individual obligations, to spiritualities that concentrate on subjective fulfillment. Grace Davie’s work is also associated with the related ideas of vicarious religion and inherited religious memories (Beckford 2003 -53-55 Davie 1994, 2003).   European churches, Davie argues, are able to carry out vicarious religious duties successfully as they are repositories of a second concept, that of inherited religious memories. [5]

Bruce claims that there exists a close relationship between modernization and secularization. He says modernization will result in irreversible secularization except “where religion has other work to do for cultural defense and where there is cultural transition going on “(Bruce 2002 p37). His definition of religion is:“beliefs, actions and institutions which assume the existence of supernatural entities with powers of action, or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose” (Bruce 1995 ix), which excludes what for him are quite specious ideas of continued religious vitality outside of conventional religious observance (Bruce 1995 46-60). His analysis of the decline of British religiosity uses available statistics, and supplements this with a number of other possible indicators. Amongst his statistics and indicators (Bruce 1995 pp31,32,35,38,41,42-44,55),  there are areas that I believe could benefit from further analysis according to churchmanship:  For instance he looks at “religious observation” statistics which are not further analysed into churchmanship categories even though he acknowledges a “shift to the right” (Bruce 1995 p67). He also counts media accounts (both print and broadcast) amongst his religious indicators (1995, pp 55-57, 2002 p 167), without critically analyzing the media picture.

Davie’s approach separates out extrinsic and intrinsic indicators of religion. She lays this out in her survey of the European situation where she discusses five indicators she finds from the EVS (European Values Study) and EVSSG (European Value System Study Group) (Davie 2001 p266) [6]. She then divides the indicators into two groups, those that represent feelings and experience, and the “more numinous” indicators of religious belief, and secondly “the orthodoxy, participation and attachment”, saying that it is the latter which is declining and the former which proves more resilient. (Davie 2001 p266). This approach, the separation of these categories, will be kept in mind during the empirical congregational study part of my research, and may help guide questionnaire composition.

In her “Religion in Britain since 1945”(Davie 1994), which specifically deals with the local situation, Davie uses the expression “common religion”  (also known as “privatized religion” ) (Davie 1994 p75-76) to denote religious behavior separate from active participation or membership of a religious institution. Her arguments for the case for enduring religious sensibility in the United Kingdom include the following sub-arguments: Firstly she includes an historical analysis, that helps inform and explain her examination of the contemporary situation (Davie 1994 p29-44). Secondly she provides an interpretation of statistics that indicate that extrinsic religious observance has declined (Davie 1994 p 45-72). Thirdly she gives an interpretation of statistical and ethnographic material that supports her belief that religious belief exists in a privatized form (Davie 1994 p74-84). Fourthly Davie enters into a discussion of the role of the Church of England as an established church. At the time of writing Religion in Britain since 1945 (1994) this came  with a question mark over the future of the Church of England, in relation to the controversies in the 90’s over female clergy. (Davie 1994 139-159).

Many of Davie’s indicator’s for religiosity intersect with my churchmanship analysis – Her questions about established religion for instance  overlap with my concerns and she expresses opinions about the media as an expression of “believing without belonging” (Davie 1994 pp112-113). Furthermore she devotes most of chapter 8 of Religion in Britain since 1945 (1994 139-159) to a discussion of the role of the Church of England as an established church.

However, although I see a case for my work possibly augmenting a pool of data to which the theories of Bruce and Davie might be applied, I am not specifically engaged in trying to add to their work - I offer the relationship of what I am engaged in and these theorists merely as an example of how my work might be applied. To further decouple my research from specific theorists, it will be helpful to look at their work objectively and see what I consider to be their strengths and weaknesses. 

Where Bruce and Davie agree is with the interpretation of statistics and indicators of external religious behavior: These indicate that external signs of religiosity, such as church membership and participation are in decline. I have found this echoed in the media discourse. They also seem to agree that conservative and charismatic expressions of religiosity are faring better than moderate and liberal expressions. They differ insofar as Bruce considers this to be the entire picture, whereas Davie believes that there is still evidence of a significant degree of meaningful subscription to Christian and other religious values which are privatized or to use her expression, examples of “common” religion. She sees religious institutions as declining no more rapidly than other voluntary institutions, and sees them as repositories of religious symbolism that we see accessed on various occasions, notably witnessed at times of public tragedy such as the Hillsborough tragedy or the death of Princess Diana (Davie 1994 p88-91 2002 p19).

Beckford (2003 p53), describes Davie’s position as odd insofar as it admits the declining statistical significance of religious institutions whilst still arguing that they occupy a significant public role. He identifies three major criticisms (Beckford 2003 p54). Firstly he says that the indicators simply don’t support Davie’s claim of a readjustment of believing and belonging. Secondly he rejects her claim that belonging to the church matches similar drops in membership of other voluntary groups, and therefore that public secularization just maps a change in attitudes to institutional belonging. He counter-argues that religious groups, and here one must consider the Church of England as a prime example, often have special privileges that artificially resuscitate them, so therefore the actual position in these institutions if they were otherwise on a par with comparable voluntary institutions would be far worse. Thirdly, and again of direct relevance to my criteria of churchmanship, he says that uncritical use of this theory could lead to a downplaying of the phenomenon of success amongst charismatic and conservative evangelical groups.

Bruce’s position has the benefit of providing a simple and clear account of a situation of undeniable decline in church-going behavior in Britain. In fact the British position provides the strongest support for his theories. As classic secularization theory falters in the face of counter-indications, Bruce suffers similarly. So, for instance, on a worldwide level, he is criticized for failing to account for the increase of religious behavior in, for example, the US, which he sees as an “exception”.(Furseth and Repstad 2003 p88)  His US  statistics disagree with those of RCT theorists such as Stark. (e.g 2002 pp5, 42, 62-63). However in the UK, the accuracy of statistics and indicators he uses are not generally disputed. One might question however whether he defines religion so closely that he automatically discounts one major point of interest – to wit: whether disenchantment with public religion is matched by a decline in private religiosity. He warns against discovering religion by definition (Bruce 1995 46-60, but one could equally question whether he is in danger of eliminating religion by definition. Where, and if possible, I intend to attempt to incorporate some indication of the relative attitudes towards public and private religion in the different churchmanship groups – for example by asking how important they feel church membership and attendance to be.

Callum Brown, who comes to the field of the sociology of religion from the perspective of an historian, takes a different approach to the analysis of Church history during the period 1800 – 2000. He utilizes cultural theory and makes considerable use of discourse analysis of personal histories to make sense of other statistical data. In “The Death of Christian Britain” (Brown 2001) he sets out his major themes, which are returned to in “Religion and Society in Twentieth Century Britain” (2006)

Brown’s themes are, firstly, that Britain did not in fact undergo a period of secularization from 1800 to the 1960’s; secondly that the major change in religious behavior came in the 1960’s as the result of major changes in social discourses (Brown 2001 p21); thirdly that these changes were inextricably tied up with the lives of women who were the prime “carriers of the discourse” (Davie (critiquing Brown)2002 p20), and lastly that the true measure of religiosity in a society is how much it is tied up with the cultural norms of that society.(Brown 2001 pp12-14)

Brown uses statistics in combination with his personal testimonies to underpin his controversial view (Brown 2001 p14). These run, as Brown himself indicates, contrary to conventional statistical interpretation. And Brown also indicates that the heart of the thesis comes from his discourse analysis. A difficulty with Brown’s heavy use of personal testimonies is the question of how far one can generalize from them. Given his emphasis on shared discourse one might have also expected his thesis to have had more reliance on the development of broadcast media in the sixties, and his accent on female discourses is criticized by Davie as being too strong (Davie 2002 p21).

Like Davie I remain unconvinced by the stress Brown puts on the role of women, to the exclusion of almost all other factors, and I am suspicious of statistical and other indicators he uses to support his timeframe for secularization. However I am interested both in the greater role he gives to qualitative analysis – I too will be employing extensive use of discourse analysis in my study – and in the prominence he gives to public discourse as a measure of religiosity. I hope that my study of the media and new media discourses will prove instructive to others who wish give similarly high value to public discourse as a measure of secularization.

In summary, we have seen that the concept of secularization was once considered to be paradigmatic in the social sciences, but that the notion  that religion loses its normative grip and many of its functions as time passes, has in time been challenged and replaced by a number of secularization theories that give competing accounts of how the function and place of religion change in time in various geographical locations. Such theories are rooted in a limited pool of data, the interpretation of which is not always clear and various theorists occupying varying theoretical terrain interpret the same data in different ways. In Britain two key theorists Bruce and Davie interpret the available data – including, church statistics, general values and attitudes surveys, public discourses and the social standing of church related institutions in competing ways, with Bruce seeing them as examples of how religion loses influence, and Davie arguing that they simply illustrate how religion moves into the private sphere. Callum Brown uses an analysis of public discourses to argue that British society has become secularized, but essentially only since the 60’s, which is a radical departure from other theorists - most secularization theories occupy a timeframe  beginning at the reformation and accelerating after the enlightenment (Herbert 2003 p27).

We have seen that both Bruce and Davie explicitly comment on the relative success of conservative expressions of religion compared to liberal and moderate expressions (Bruce 1995 p67-70, Davie 1994 p8 Beckford 2003 p55). There is only limited academic literature on the comparative fortunes of different expressions of Christianity in the UK (e.g Percy 2006) but the Church of England with its juxtaposition of conservative, liberal and moderate churchmanship groups is undoubtedly especially fertile territory for such studies, and in my methods I shall remain aware of the possibilities of my research to help illuminate the reasons behind the relative fortunes of the different churchmanship groups.

Some of the questions I intend to keep in mind whilst preparing my congregational fieldwork, and which derive from this survey of secularization studies, are: Is liberal Anglicanism too close to general society in terms of beliefs,( which in Davie’s scheme, “believes without belonging “anyway), to provide any incentive to opt into it? Does conservative Christianity fare well because it helps with the uncertainties of the “postmodern” condition (cf Bauman in (Herbert 2003 p 33)), or is it the case that the “market conditions” are better suited for conservative religion (cf Rational Choice Theory). And, is conservative religion seen as a distinctive “religious market option” because its authority structure requires separation out from the norms of society (e.g the rejection of metropolitan liberal values seen in the homosexuality row), or is it just successfully and distinctively marketed (a thesis put forward in Robert Beckford’s 2003 documentary film – God is Black)?

Irrespective of how my research might help shed light on such questions, my main aim is simply to add to the pool of existing religious sociology data by providing more data and analysis of public discourses, the styles of religion practiced in the C of E and perceptions and self understanding according to the category of churchmanship which should provide useful material for secularization theorists to use in any number of ways.

 

 

 

Sources of data for secularization theory and recent Church history:

 

Secularization studies and churchmanship studies are rooted in history (e.g Davie 1994, Randall 2005). The categories of available sources that one can use to construct a recent history of the Church are:  statistics, histories, and discourses and recent history as provided by media and new media.

The available statistics relevant to the Church of England come from various sources many of which are listed in Bruce’s  Religion in Modern Britain (1995 pp71-72). Some of the most comprehensive statistics come from Peter Brierley whose Christian Research,  Religious Trends surveys also make some effort to differentiate between churchmanship groups (Brierley 1991, 1997,1999,2001,2003, 2005,2006, 2008). Data on very recent church history comes largely from discourses in the media.

 Of all the available sources of church data it seems that media discourse is the one most sparsely covered in the literature. It is my intention to conduct a three part empirical media analysis and discourse analysis, whose methods and timescales are discussed in the methods section of this report. Initial impressions, however, show a narrative where “conservatives” – usually sub-divided into Anglo-Catholics and Conservative Evangelicals – are pitted against “liberals”, with the points of division being the church’s attitude towards homosexuality and the ordination of female bishops.

I have completed a series of interviews amongst broadsheet religious affairs correspondents ( Clifford Longley (ex-Times/Tablet), Ruth Gledhill (Times), George Pitcher (Telegraph), Jonathan Petre (ex-Telegraph/ Mail), Victoria Combe (ex-Telegraph/Tablet), Jonathn Wynne Jones (Telegraph), Stephen Bates (Guardian), Andrew Brown (ex-Independent/Guardian), Andrew Carey (Church of England Newspaper)  In this empirical research my findings were as follows (please note that whilst a brief indication of individual opinion is given in brackets, a full breakdown is available on request):

Firstly I found a decline in media interest (GP, CL, AB, and VC all explicitly commented). More specifically it was collectively acknowledged that a lack of  interest in the C of E as the established church exists throughout the tabloids. The “Red Tops” interest was often characterised as being simply interested in “naughty vicar” stories (AB GP VC SB RG JW agreed explicitly; JP and CL by implication). It was universally felt that the Mail had an interest in religion but only outside of Church affairs and as it impinged on the lives of their readers ( GP, VC, SB,  AC, JWJ, JP,  AC agreed; CL and AB implied) . Correspondents felt that Church of England affairs were only extensively covered by the Times, Telegraph and Guardian (CL and AC explicit agreed; all others implicitly agreed).

Secondly, among the broadsheets there was a strong feeling that the Times covers religion and the C of E as news more extensively than any other paper (all but AC agreed, AC not asked). It was thought that it feels that its readers are interested in the Church as establishment (all but AC agreed, AC not asked). It was further perceived by some that the Times makes more of stories than other papers and that by some that the paper has biases that vary with time and story(AB, GP, SB, JWJ, JP,  CL, AC explicitly agreed; VC implied agreement).

 Thirdly, (and leaving aside the tabloids), I found that with respect to possible liberal bias, there exists among the correspondents a general assumption that the Independent and the Guardian would have a consistently socially liberal stance on homosexuality and gender equality (AB, GP, VC  SB, JWJ, JP, CL, AC all agreed). It was felt however that the Times and Telegraph although substantially socially conservative on certain issues (RG, JWJ, GP agreed ) – such as sexuality –  could not be relied on so to be, and often followed progressive metropolitan values (CL and VC commented strongly so)

Fourthly, it was agreed that the coverage has been dominated by schism stories but that some papers are losing interest in this story (CL JWJ and AB specifically). Within these “division” stories about conflict between churchmanship groups have been generally fairly reported (JP, JWJ, SB remarked so; SB, GP AB offered explanations of how the mechanics of news reporting can present a lop-sided picture). Moreover, it was considered that that the story about the internal church disputes doesn’t necessarily reflect sentiment in the pews.

 

Finally it was thought that the use of labels may be crude but it is done with the best intention to relay a complex picture (JP felt the broad-brush use of labels was sometimes “inevitable”, JWJ, GP and SB agreed that the use of labels was a way of simplifying a complicated picture). For example while certain evangelical groups have a clear line on certain issues, we may find that liberal groups are less well organised and defined and so we may still question whether we should talk of people being liberal as per issue, as much as talk about liberal, as a group (AB, GP, VC, SB, JWJ, JP, CL, AC remarked accordingly).

Over the last couple of years “new media” forms – internet blogs, message boards etc – often user generated, have supplemented traditional media forms. The emerging importance of blogs and other new media is currently becoming evident in many spheres of activity. In the recent political past we have seen that blogs caused the resignation of aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Damian McBride. This was seen as a significant rite of passage in the “blogosphere”, by media commentators (e.g “Political blogs thrown centre stage by email 'smear' row” April 11 2009 Iain Dale Telegraph). The impact of blogs on religious discourse was the subject of a recent Radio 4 documentary, by Robert Beckford (God.com radio 4 February 9 2009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hc2cx  ). I am intending to conduct a literature survey and media analysis of blogs at a future point, which will attempt to answer questions of who they are written by, who they are written for, their scope in subject, and their scope in numbers. However a cursory review reveals a number of user-generated Church of England related Blogs such as,  Thinking Anglicans (liberal), Inclusive Church (liberal),  Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream ( conservative evangelical) The Ugley Vicar (conservative evangelical parody) Fulcrum  ( open evangelical), Anglican Mainstream  (conservative evangelical), Stand Firm (conservative evangelical), and that production communities are keen to keep pace with their own interactive “faith blogs”, which correspondents and editors told me were very popular.

Print and internet discourses are well archived which makes research straightforward. Researching broadcast material is currently more problematic, although the situation is made easier as increasing amounts of material become available on internet archives and DVD. There is also a limited amount of literature on religious broadcasting which I am still in the process of assimilating. That being said I have some early stage findings of the way in which broadcast material informs the public discourse on the Church of England.

As noted by Steve Bruce (Bruce 1995 p 55), religious worship programming has declined in recent times. (This is interpreted differently by Davie 1994 p112-114 as “Believing without belonging par excellence”) In 1995 however Bruce noted that there were fewer services broadcast live on Sundays and ITV has lost Highway, its rival to Songs of Praise. On Sunday mornings, during the past decade, this pattern seems to have continued. BBC’s broadcast service gave way to the Heaven and Earth show (that dealt with religious and ethical issues from either a non or multi partisan fashion) which gave way to The Big Issues.

Outside of specific “God slots”, documentary output covers a fair degree of religious broadcasting. The BBC’s and Channel 4’s religious output are discussed on specific websites (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ and  http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/index.html ) Documentary output has remained reasonably consistent over the last 25 years and although documentaries rarely seem to interrogate the C of E head on, they do deal with large religious issues, frequently via a personality or big current issue. Channel 4 has just finished a multi-part celebrity driven exploration of “Christianity”, which gave a range of opinions. Twenty five years earlier, in 1984, the BBC commissioned Cambridge theologian, Don Cupitt to make a multi-part documentary that deconstructed and reinterpreted Christianity. This inspired a radical liberal churchmanship group in the Church of England.[7]

In the nineties The Alpha Course, an influential expression of evangelical and particularly charismatic evangelical Church of England Churchmanship,  was given a sympathetic treatment in  ITV’s  – Alpha: Did it change their lives, presented by Sir David Frost. In recent years there has been a series of documentaries inspired by the hit novel “The Da Vinci Code”, which attempted to deconstruct Christianity:  Channel 4 commissioned The Hidden Story of Jesus and The Secret Family of Jesus, and most recently The Secrets of The Twelve Disciples, all fronted by theologian Robert Beckford.

In Beckford ‘s God is Black (broadcast 2003) he approaches the subject of the division of the Church of England ( between liberal and conservative)  via the impact of African Christianity. In 2008  there were other attempts by Channel 4 to look directly at the Church, presented as the personal views of the presenters. These documentaries took a skeptical view of the Christian right of conservative evangelical church groups.

The caption for Rod Liddle’s “Dispatches “The New Fundamentalists”” (2008) on the Channel 4 website, in particular played up churchmanship divisions in the Church of England. It read:

The mainstream of the Anglican Church, comfortably familiar to Radio 4 listeners and those who pray only at Christmas and Easter, is in decline. But the evangelical wing is growing. It is targeting and recruiting young people and, says  middle-of-the-road Christian Rod Liddle, could make up half the congregation of the Church of England within five years.

In David Modell’s (2008) recent documentary “In God’s Name”, looking at the rise of Fundamentalism in the UK well – known ex Anglican (now Assemblies of God) extremist (Stephen Green) is portrayed to be in close working relationship with current Anglican Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship. The pattern was the same – Modell was present in his own film and the subject matter was unlikely to be supported by many. BBC2’s Battle of the Bishops (broadcast Spring 2008) looked at the breakaway evangelical conference GAFCON, in a moderately unsympathetic manner. A more sympathetic take on evangelical and evangelical Church of England  beliefs was presented on Channel 4’s “Make me a Christian” (broadcast 2008)

Church affairs seem to be treated on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky news simply in relation to their position in the mainstream news agenda.

Of course religious output is not limited to factual programming. In the same way that public discourse is carried in novels so it is carried in drama. In British Broadcasting there seems to be a tradition in straight and comic drama of portraying Church of England vicars in a nostalgic and mild manner.[8] In recent years perhaps the most resonant portrayal of  the C of E on TV was BBC’s hit comedy, the Vicar of Dibley, now frequently rerun on satellite channels. Dawn French portraying one of the new breed of women vicars, still managed to perfectly capture a sense of nostalgia for passing rural English community cemented by a gentle liberal pastoral presence. The Vicar of Dibley was taken into the nation’s hearts as not only a symbol of the changing C of E, but as a symbol of a rural idyll. Rebecca Fowler wrote in the Telegraph (Women Priests and their continuing Battle 12/11/2007), with respect to the plight of women vicar

Perhaps the single greatest sign of acceptance was the success of The Vicar of Dibley, the comedy series in which Dawn French's Geraldine Granger ran a country parish. At its peak, it attracted 15 million viewers - an audience the Church could only dream of seeing in the pews.

Callum Brown discusses the role of satire in the 60’s in Death of Christian Britain (Brown 2001 p178), in undermining authority including church authority. A similar wave of satire arose in the 80’s  -for example the C of E came in for some particularly acerbic satirizing during the 80’s, in the satirical sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News, which  followed one sketch – Are You A Gay Christian ?, the next week with Mel Smith portraying a liberal vicar asking the question, The Devil – is he all bad ?

And of course religious broadcasting is not limited to the television.  Radio 4 still includes a live Sunday service and a daily service on its am frequency. Religious commentators get an outlet on Thought for the Day, and Start the Week and Midweek. In particular Roger Bolton presents a religious affairs programme, Sunday. Radio 4’s religious output is often perceived as liberal and intellectual. Anthony Jay characterizes it as “media liberalism” in his 2007 Sunday Times piece “Confessions of a BBC liberal” (August 12 2007)

In David Hendy’s piece in the New Humanist ( “God Slot” October 2007) he notes how

 Historically, much of the burden of implementing this (he is referring here to Reith’s desire for the BBC to maintain moral and religious values) religious mission has fallen most heavily on Radio Four – the direct descendant of the old Home Service…..y, the station has never quite dispelled – nor wished to dispel – what one of its producers described as a “vague moral Christian aura”.

But tellingly, then goes on to discuss how close Radio 4 has got to allowing atheists to contribute to Thought for the Day, and implies that that day might not be far off. A perception of Radio 4 religious programming is given in the Channel 4 online comment about Liddle’s Dispatches programme, The New Fundamentalists;

The mainstream of the Anglican Church, comfortably familiar to Radio 4 listeners and those who pray only at Christmas and Easter, is in decline

In addition to these sources from which we may piece together a history of the Church there are a number of straightforward histories of the Church. These include  Grace Davie: “Religion in Britain since 1945” (1994) , Brown: The Death of Christian Britain (2001) , Brown: Religion and Society in Twentieth Century Britain (2006), Bruce: Religion in Modern Britain (1995) , Hastings A History of English Christianity (1986), and Beeson “Round the Church in 50 years: An intimate journey”(2007). Post-millenium history is covered in a highly personal form from Michael Hampson, in his “ Last Rites” (2006), and the former Guardian correspondent Stephen Bates has recent an openly polemical and politicized account of recent Church history in “A Church at War”(Bates 2005). Using all the sources available I offer the following sketch of the postwar church from which I hope a picture of the dynamics of the church and the context of the current disputes is made clear.

 

 

 

Recent History of The Church of England.:

 

Hampson (2006) tells us that “by the mid 20^th” century the liberal centre of the C of E had become more Catholic, the Catholic wing more liberal and Protestant Evangelicalism more isolated and separated.  He claims that one churchmanship group, the Liberal Catholic had achieved a consensual dominance and that a rival group, the Evangelicals were cast into the “role of loyal opposition. “(Hampson 2006 p64).

It is not clear exactly what he means by mid 20^th century, but one can only conclude he means the forties or the sixties or both but not the fifties. Brown (2001) , Davie (1994) , and Hastings (1986) all indicate that the dominant characteristics of the fifties were post war austerity and an accompanying sense of piety, evangelical piety (Brown 2001 170, Davie 1994, Hastings 1986: 444).

Hastings, like Brown emphasises the phenomenon of the “crusades” of American evangelist Billy Graham to Britain. He adds that this alone may have been less significant if it hadn’t been supplemented by the appointment of John Stott in 1950 as the Rector of All Soul’s, Langham Place. Hastings (1986  p455) tells us

from then on (Stott) must be counted one of the most influential figures in the Christian World, standing at the point of intersection of the Evangelical movement and the Church of England.

His influence was longstanding. Bates in 2005 described him as the “high priest of Evangelical Anglicanism”, and speaks of his continuing importance (Bates 2005 p12).

As with many areas of society conservatism in religion was turned upside down in the radical sixties. Historians have analysed religion in the sixties in different ways but although the challenge to the Church of new secular ideas and social attitudes is historically important it is the challenge to the Church of new theologies, both liberal and Pentecostal, that is primary relevance to churchmanship studies. So although the sixties saw radical changes to public attitudes towards gender , sexuality, authority, youth culture, and media; regarding the Church specifically, the sixties brought two particular additions to the Anglican landscape. Firstly it brought new “liberal” theology out of the domain of academia, and into the general purview of the Church. Secondly “charismatic” Pentecostal expressions of Christianity arrived in the Church of England. Regarding the first, one event in particular is associated with the popularizing of liberal theology: the publication in 1963 of Honest To God by the Bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson.  Although this received a great deal of attention in the media at the time and is extensively noted by historians  (e.g Brown 2001, p186, p190, Davie 1994 p 34), the longer term influence on the Church is moot. The ideas it brought to a more mainstream audience were complex, suited to academia but unpopular in churches[9], and although these  ideas  would later be re-popularised in the eighties by the then Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins and Don Cupitt the extent to which these beliefs permeated into the wider religious constituency of the country is less well established.

The introduction of Charismatic evangelicalism certainly did take root in the Church of England. Hastings comments on how there was initial skepticism amongst Evangelicals who distrusted the idea of authority coming from the Holy Spirit as well as the Bible (1986 p557) Superficially similar to the informal and emotional styles of worship found in Charismatic Evangelicalism but not to be confused was the proliferance of guitar based liturgies that attempted to keep pace with the musical tastes of the era. (Hampson 2006 p66) – popular songs included Lord of the Dance and Kum Ba Yah. Hastings tells us about the interplay between liberal Anglo-Catholic leadership (1986 p532),and developing Evangelical “movements”( 1986 p554). Combining  Hastings , Brown and Hampson we get a picture of the sixties’ Church as comprising distinctive Evangelicals (associated with John Stott), emerging Charismatics, Liberal Anglo-Catholics (associated with the Archbishop of Canterbury), and Liberals interested in the “new theology”  (associated with John Robinson).

The seventies like the sixties saw religious decline in the UK. (Hastings 1986 p702) ( Brown 2001 p189). However the picture was nuanced. Although the general pattern was of decline, religion did display some signs of growth. For example Hastings (Hastings 1986 p619) talks of the growth of house churches, the flourishing of Evangelicalism (Hastings 1986 p615), and the continuing influence of John Stott (Hastings 1986 p615-617).  The Evangelical, Donald Coggan had a relatively brief tenure from 1974 to 1980 as Archbishop of Canturbury, which marked a shift away from the liberal catholic mood of Ramsey’s reign.

In terms of numbers during the eighties the Church of England declined only slightly less badly then during the seventies. (cf Bruce 1995 p40).Robert Runcie, from the Anglo-Catholic centre became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1980 (Hastings 1986 p 613). The eighties was a time when certain liberal voices reached a mainstream audience.  David Jenkins, a controversial figure who publicly espoused some radical theology became the Bishop of Durham in 1984 . His radical attitudes towards the virgin birth and the literal resurrection are discussed in Beeson’s Round the Church in 50 years (Beeson 2007 p207-208).That was also the year that the BBC commissioned the radical liberal theologian Don Cupitt to make the series “The Sea of Faith” (http://www.sofn.org.uk/pov/pearse_editorial.html). The Church also adopted a socially liberal stance, which brought it into conflict with the Conservative government. (Beeson 2007 p200, 201, 214).

According to Hampson and Davie (2006, 1994), the real change during the eighties was not in the liberal attempts to merge with the secular, it was in the groundswell of Evangelical Anglicanism. Michael Hampson claims that the eighties was the time when Charismatics and Evangelicals joined forces ( Hampson 2006 p90-91), and Beeson notes the rise of the “evangelical” Holy Trinity Brompton and Bishopsgate churches(Beeson 2007 p204-206).

This revival of evangelicalism can only have been helped by the appointment of evangelical George Carey as archbishop of Canterbury in 1991. And Holy Trinity Brompton’s Alpha course was one of two particularly visible developments in the Church of England in the 1990’s, the other being a particularly “liberal “development, the ordination of women as clergy.

Hampson proposes that by the mid-nineties the Church was divided into  “liberal and fundamentalist”, and that (Hampson 2006 p102-105)  the existing power balance between churchmanship groups  was upset when the ordination of women caused a lot of traditionalist Anglo-Catholics to defect to Rome, giving a disproportionate amount of power to Evangelicals. It is worth noting that Hampson’s book is as much personal testimony and  polemic as conventional history – he is a former gay priest who left the Church because of his opposition to Evangelical attitudes (Hampson 2006 p3-4) –and so many of  his observations may be coloured or skewed. Nonetheless the success of his book (http://www.michaelhampson.co.uk/ ) indicates he is speaking from a wider platform than simply himself.

The ordination of women was also significant in its precipitation of interest groups with certain ideological beliefs. Reform, an uncompromising Evangelical group was set up in 1993, with a covenant that explicitly rejects the appropriateness of women priests. Forward in Faith, an Anglo-Catholic group was set up in 1992. Its website describes it thus: “Forward in Faith is a worldwide association of Anglicans who are unable in conscience to accept the ordination of women as priests or as bishops.” A contrasting group, Affirming Catholicism was set up in 1990, and soon counted prominent liberal Anglo-Catholics Jeffrey John and Rowan Williams amongst their number. A number of newspaper reports demonstrate their early commitment to supporting the role of women as priests. (e.g The Times November 16, 1992, Monday “Carey plays down danger of mass defections by priests”By Louise Hidalgo, “Christians accused of politicking” The Times November 2, 1992 (Ruth Gledhill), LETTER: God, Women and a Brighter Future, The Guardian (5-3-94))

Regarding the Alpha course, statistics in 2004 showed that Alpha’s Holy Trinity Brompton attracted 6000 people each Sunday. At that point over 6,000,000 people had completed the Alpha course. There is evidence that Alpha is the church’s biggest recruiting sergeant. (cf Middle Class Heaven – Saturday Times Magazine 3/7/04 Hilary Rose.) Alpha had  its roots in The Toronto Blessing Movement, a Charismatic event that occurred in the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church in 1994.

My initial newspaper discourse analysis suggests that the period between the 1998 and 2008 Lambeth Conferences was dominated in the public eye by two areas of controversy. These came together in the summer of 2008  when rows over female leadership and  attitudes towards homosexuality lead to dissent. The most provocative act of opposition was as the formation of a rival to the Lambeth conference, GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference). GAFCON was a rival evangelical conference set up to oppose certain liberal tendencies in the church. It had a Church of England counterpart - 800 clergy and lay readers met at All Souls Langham Place on July 1^st, in the first steps towards what the Times called a “church within a church” (Times 2/8/08), FOCA.

The GAFCON conference was the latest in a series of battles between liberal and conservative Anglicans over gay clergy[10], which have had at their heart two major flashpoints. The first serious incident in the gay dispute came in 2003 when celibate homosexual Canon Jeffrey John was put up for the position of the (suffragan) Bishop of Reading. The main players were the pro-gay liberals and anti-gay conservative evangelicals. As Alex Kirby (BBC Online) wrote at the time:

A gay bishop from Wales is facing a new attempt by conservatives and evangelicals to block his promotion to a senior church role. (20-6-2003)

Kirby’s piece goes on to explain that the “attempt” started with a letter from nine evangelical bishops and ended with protests with placards and evangelical churches threatening to withhold diocesan quotas.The Gene Robinson controversy involved an openly gay Episcopalian in New Hampshire being consecrated an Anglican Bishop in 2003, causing a wave of condemnation by evangelicals in Britain, and the so-called Global South[11].

 The arguments over female episcopal leadership have mainly been a concern of Anglo-Catholics represented by Forward in Faith, and whilst the gay issue may run on for a while,  the row over women bishops looks like it is about to reach its conclusion. Synod eventually voted on the evening of 7th July 2008 to press ahead with female bishops with minor concessions. One can trace back the media narrative on women bishops to that of women priests, and the lobbying that took place prior to 1994. This was reignited about seven years ago when a working party on women bishops was set up. Despite the success of female vicars (cf Telegraph 12/11/07) it soon became clear that this was going to be divisive as that issue had been in 1994.(cf “Church prepares the way for women bishops” Telegraph (29/06/01)

In April 2008 the Times reported about the mooted “Gender Havens to avert split in Church” (29/4/08) and the front page headline of Tuesday 1 July 2008 ran “Clergy plan mass exit over women bishops”. Within, Ruth Gledhill wrote, “the Church’s moderate centre is being pressurised as never before by evangelicals opposed to gays, and traditionalists opposed to women’s ordination”.

But since the synod vote six days later there has been little further news coverage on the story.

In addition to stories concerning the rows within the church that have prompted talk of possible schism, there have been two other significant areas of recent history that impact on churchmanship groups in the contemporary church.

The first is a response to the various statistics that are generated, and is directly related to the study of secularization. This is the ongoing story of declining levels of religious observance. For example in recent years the Telegraph has reported “Baptised Anglicans are now a minority “ (Telegraph V Combe 26/09/2001), has asked “In 18 years, will there still be a Church of England ?” (Telegraph J Petre 24/07/2003) and charted the overall change in the religious map in “The changing face of British Christianity” (Telegraph, J Wynn-Jones O Craig,26/12/07).The Times has similarly told us that “Anglican Church attendance has stabilized” (Times reporter 23/12/07), but also that “Over half of Britons claim no religion” (Times R Gledhill 21/2/08).

The effect of these stories can be to underscore the fact that it is the “broad” and “liberal” churchmanship groups that are failing;( those are the styles of Anglicanism implied in these articles). The impression that many may then get is that the Church  is being taken over by a more hard-line version of Anglicanism. This impression comes from stories such as reports about Richard Turnbull of Wycliffe Hall, “The Man who says we are all going to Hell” (Independent A Mcsmith, 25/05/07), and on the proposal for a disciplinary structure to reunite the church, “Church to impose “rule book” of beliefs” (Telegraph J Wynn-Jones, 03/06/07), and reports about the outspoken remarks from the Bishop of Rochester  (Sunday Times Shiraz Maher  “Muslim Britain is becoming one big no-go area” 1/13/08)

The other story is more relevant to the politics of the church and the battles between churchmanship groups. Reports of threats by evangelical groups to withhold funds in protest to the proposed appointment of Jeffrey John, appeared in many papers, and is reported by Stephen Bates in “A Church at War” (Bates 2005). Michael Hampson develops this into a theory. He tells us only a generation ago the clergy were funded almost entirely by ancient endowments (Hampson 2006 p167), but in the final decades of the last century the church looked instead to lay people in the pews. These are known as diocesan quotas. Hampson opines:

With the financial situation so desperate – and those at the top in each diocese so fearful – those large churches with large quotas have a phenomenal leverage over the leadership. …. Limited withholdings have begun…the precedent is clear: the bishop now does what the fundamentalists say, or the whole diocesan edifice will come crashing down. (Hampson 2006 176-177)

In summary we have seen evidence from the available historical and media sources that churchmanship groups have become particularly consolidated and political in the post-war period leading to a situation last year where there was acute division between Evangelicals and Liberals over homosexuality and Anglo-Catholics and Liberals over female bishops. (In both instances there is no clear understanding of what is meant by “Liberal”[12]). This raises certain questions. Are these tensions within the Church, for example, part of a cyclical process that derives from the Church’s historical roots in both Evangelical and Catholic traditions (There have been plenty of historical precedents for tensions between churchmanship groups in previous centuries)? Or maybe in the latter part of the last century, conditions have been such that liberal expressions of Anglicanism have begun to lose ground in the (dwindling) religious market place to more conservative expressions? It also seems possible that tensions in the church derive from liberal churchmen’s adoption of aspects of secular society’s attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in a manner that more conservative Anglicans feel compromises the inherent integrity of the religion. Whatever may be the explanations for the current rifts, the situation seems to be exacerbated by politicization, whereby organized groups representing certain beliefs, for example Reform, and Forward in Faith have arisen. These last points have been explicitly explored by Bates (2005) and Hampson (2006), and in media coverage. However news reports are driven by the need to provide the starkest top line and those other works mentioned as much offer personal opinion as attempt to be unbiased historical accounts. This may cause us still to ask the question of why certain churchmanship groups seem to have become entrenched in warring camps, and, more pressingly, where the boundaries of these groups are? For whilst there can be no doubt that politicized groups exist in the church, a question still remains whether, outside of events that have been covered in the press, they exert a significant influence on churchmen, both local clergy and their congregations?

 

Churchmanship Studies :

 

An historical survey of the traditions of the Church of England is the starting point for several of the studies into churchmanship groups that appear in the literature – e.g “The Comparative Strength of Evangelical and Catholic Anglican Churches in England”, Francis and Lankshear (2003), Evangelicals etc Randall (2005), and Fate of the Anglican Clergy ,Towler and Coxon (1979). These remind us that the Church or England is often claimed to be both Catholic and Reformed. Ever since the English reformation there has been tension within the C of E between “Biblical” Protestant theology on the one hand and a continuing commitment to the episcopacy and sacraments on the other (Edwards 1983: Avis 1989).

From an historical perspective we see, from the time of the English Reformation, the existence of Catholic, and Protestant; in the Elizabethan era the addition of the Via Media or middle way; in the seventeenth century a division between Puritans and royalist-influenced Catholics; in the late seventeenth century came liberal “Latitudianarians” and the influence of reason; during the eighteenth century the great Evangelical (Protestant) awakenings arrived; and the Victorian age saw the birth of Anglo-Catholicism ( Oxford Movement) and the influence of liberal Bible scholarship. In the twentieth century we add the existence of Charismatic Anglicanism.[13]

Churchgoers might notice evidence of the different churchmanship groups in the materials and liturgies used in different churches, and non-churchgoers in media discourse. Ordinands studying to be clergy will be aware of the churchmanship style of their theological college (cf  Runcie Report 1970) Further indicators of the churchmanship groups comes from the advertisements placed in the Church Times for clergy (as noted in the Rural Church Report (Randall (2005) pp52-53) ), and the tradition that exists to alternate the office of archbishop of Canterbury between Catholic and Evangelical (cf http://www.archbishopofyork.org/154?q=recognized ).

However even within the churchmanship traditions of Evangelical and Catholic, there are various subgroups. It is the divisions within divisions that studies of churchmanship have tried to illuminate. Towler and Coxon make the point that such groups are hard to grasp “because they are so deeply embedded in the Church’s long and sometimes obscure history” (Towler and Coxon 1979 p106). Furthermore the picture is more  complicated than a simple Evangelical/Catholic “continuum”. For example, since the sixties we have seen the emergence of two groups that don’t necessarily fit on this continuum - Charismatic Anglicanism, and “new” or Liberal” or “progressive” theology (cf  J.A.T Robinson’s Honest to God 1963).

In fact even on the Evangelical - Anglo-Catholic “continuum” there is a problematic group in the middle that is sometimes called “centrist” and sometimes “broad”. The question remains whether these churchgoers are a churchmanship at all, as they seem to be better defined by their reluctance to be in a group, as by any kind of consolidated identity. This group also demonstrates a problem with terminology. To wit: broad Anglicans are sometimes called Liberal Anglicans (cf Brierley  pp49-67 )  But what is Liberal? Liberal also denotes the so-called liberal theology, described John Robinson’s Honest to God? And what about liberal Anglo-Catholics, theologically and liturgically orthodox but socially liberal, and whose views on female leadership and homosexuality frequently have them identified with the “Liberals” we encounter in the media narrative? (Cf The Times November 16, 1992, Monday “Carey plays down danger of mass defections by priests”By Louise Hidalgo, “Christians accused of politicking” The Times November 2, 1992 (Ruth Gledhill), LETTER: God, Women and a Brighter Future, The Guardian (5-3-94)). As in political circles where social and economic liberalism, for example, can lead to differing ideologies, the ambiguity in the type of liberalism being referred to in Church groups may be a possible cause of the lack of terminological clarity.

One way of appreciating the range of sub-groups in the Church is through the interest groups that represent them, groups such as Reform, Fulcrum, Affirming Catholicism and Forward in Faith. However whilst these groups no doubt help define the beliefs of their members and shape media and internet discourses, they fail to provide an objective classification system onto which observers may place them. However the quite detailed positions that are articulated in their materials and literature do correlate to churchmanship typologies in common usage:  Conservative Evangelicals are represented by the groups “Reform”, “Anglican Mainstream” and “Church Society”. Open (or liberal) Evangelicals are represented by “Fulcrum”. Charismatic evangelicals are represented by “New Wine”. Liberals (in the progressive theology sense) are represented by a new group called “Affirming Liberalism”. Liberal Anglo-Catholicism is represented by the group “Affirming Catholicism”. “Forward in Faith” is a single issue group that represents traditionalist Anglo-Catholics opposed to the inclusion of women in church leadership.

“Inclusive Church” is a group dedicated to making minorities including gays and lesbians, and women equally included in the C of E. It has about 40 churches in its online directory. Significantly, although, it seems to be largely comprised of liberal Anglo-Catholics, it does not ostensibly fit into any category in existing typologies for churchmanship, yet is a significant entity in Church politics and discourses. There are no groups that represent the centre ground of “broad Anglicans”.

Anecdotally, it is my experience that many people with a centrist or Broad position claim to dislike  the use of Church labels[14], and in conversation with the  C of E press office I was told, the Church on an organizational level does not encourage use of “labels” and does not analyse itself according to churchmanship groups. However one does see various indicators of the existence and nature of churchmanship groups within Church of England literature, and in Church media. For instance, the Church of England website talks about the traditions of Evangelical, Catholic and Liberal, and further mentions the newer style of Charismatic worship. (http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/history/ )

 In this section I wish to argue that we should try to understand the positions and beliefs of the interest groups, which will help us understand how many in church leadership see themselves, how certain sub-groups self-identify and will help us guide our church selection. However I wish to also argue an objective scale based on but not limited to the existing research, with which to compare their positions and the beliefs of their congregations. The latter will help us especially with churchgoers whose beliefs are less well defined than those in leadership, and with the many churches who don’t consider themselves to be from a particular churchmanship.

Existing research on churchmanship has taken one of two basic approaches, the first of which is a labelling approach, and the second an orthogonal approach – that which attempts to codify by using dimensions, or scales like axes on a graph.

Such research has also been largely focussed at leadership levels, with studies of clergy (Towler/ Coxon,1979 Daniel 1968, Coneybeare 1853,Rutledge 1993, Randall 2005), lay members of synod (Ransom, Bryman, Hinings) and churches as accessed by responses returned by the church leadership (Francis/Lankshear – various – see Francis references).

One of the earliest attempts to label churchmanship styles came from W J Coneybeare in 1853. Coneybeare noted that the simple categories then in use of High, Low and Broad were insufficient, and proposed that each broad party could be sub-divided in three giving a total of nine groups which he later revised down to 8 (Randall 2005 p44) . Towler and Coxon in 1979 made a study in which they offered the clergy sampled a choice of 6 categories: Anglo-Catholic, Prayer Book Catholic, Centrist, Modernist, Liberal Evangelical and Conservative Evangelical.

Francis and Lankshear in their 1996 study of the comparative strength of Catholicism and Evangelicalism, used a simple labelling scheme of Catholic, Evangelical and Middle way. They were later to adopt an orthogonal scheme that preferred dimensions to groups. The Runcie Report in 1970 looked into theological colleges and ascribed to them the labels, Evangelical, Tractarian (Anglo-Catholic), and Other. Ransom, Bryman and Hinings in 1974 conducted a study of lay members of synod. Their basic scheme was an Evangelical-Catholic axis ( that would give points on a graph on which people might be placed), however they also included a recognition of progressive modernist ideas that broke out of this continuum. This left them with Conservative Evangelical, Liberal Evangelical, Centrist, Prayer Book Catholic, and Anglo-Catholic on the Catholic-Evangelical axis. Outside of this they offered Modernist and New Theology (both representing progressive thought), and another category, being simply, “other”.

Peter Brierley has conducted a number of surveys  (Brierley 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008) in which he invited respondents to tick the following boxes: Broad, Evangelical, Low Church, Liberal, Charismatic, Anglo-Catholic, Orthodox, Radical. This was then put into the categories Anglo-Catholic,Broad,Catholic, Evangelical (sub-categorized as Mainstream, Broad, and Charismatic), Liberal Low Church and others. Brierley’s research gave an indication of how people saw themselves, but possibly also indicated how little understanding they had of churchmanship, with contradictory answers like Anglo-Catholic Methodist appearing. This also indicated how the beliefs of congregations might defy neat churchmanship categories.

Other uses of labelling have been the Rural Church Report (between 1998 and 1990), where options given were: Conservative Evangelical, Open Evangelical, Traditional Catholic, Modern Catholic and Central. The first person to try to plot churchmanship on overlapping graphical axes was Daniel in 1967. His scheme plotted Church and Catholicism against Evangelicalism and Bible on one dimension and  conservatism and tradition against liberalism and reason on the other (giving a graph with four quadrants). Whatever other shortcomings this approach may have had, along with all the other approaches above mentioned (bar Brierley ), it failed to accommodate the Charismatic dimension .This is something Francis Lankshear and Jones tried to address in their 1998 study.

Randall (2005 p61) moved on from this to propose a 3 dimension scheme with scales being Liberal/Catholic, Liberal/Conservative, and Charismatic/non-Charismatic. Randall  (2005 p57) makes mention of the various interest groups that members of the Church may join, such as Reform and Forward in Faith but says that he is not interest in pursuing this as a way of designating churchmanship as it would simply show an extrinsic membership to an organisation and not be an indicator of an intrinsic position. His study aims to move from a definition of this intrinsic position to relate this to other positions, e.g. social beliefs, and characteristics, e.g. introvert or extrovert personality types. However, for my purposes, I consider that analyses of these groups will not only provide a method of analysis but indicate the merits and deficiencies of any orthogonal scheme that may also be used.

All of the above studies have relied on people’s self categorization. Although the designations involved are widely used that does not mean that everyone means the same thing by them. Randall explains the complex history behind the styles of Churchmanship, Towler and Coxon (1979 pp106-107), and Ransom, Bryman and Hinings (1977 p42) and Francis et al (1992, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000) offer brief explanations of what we might find at the polarities. Towler and Coxon (1979 p106-107) for example say that an Anglo-Catholic might look to Rome for guidance, a prayer book Catholic would be more cautious and not stray from what was prescribed in the book of Common Prayer (interpreted in a Catholic way), a Conservative Evangelical would be strongly committed to the supreme authority of scripture and the importance of a Christian having a personal experience of conversion, and a liberal evangelical would have a more moderate stance on these but still dislike strong church authority, preferring individual commitment. Ransom, Bryman, and Hinings (1977 p43) refer back to Coneybeare for their basic Evangelical and Catholic positions but point out that what they refer to as Modernism and New Theology and which are sometimes now simply referred to as liberalism do not fit on the Catholic/Evangelical scale. (Ransom, Bryman, Hinings 1977 p43)

Daniels refers to the Catholics’ insistence on the use of sacraments and Evangelicals’ insistence on the emotion generated psychological crisis and the precisely placed conversion (1968 p118). For him definition is less important as he is placing Catholic and Evangelical on a four way scale of Church, Bible, Reason and Tradition (Randall 2005 p48). Daniel points out, interestingly that almost all liberals have a catholic past (Daniel 1968 p118). This is interesting as the majority of the “liberals” identified by the media, seem to be Liberal-Catholics (and identified with the Liberal Anglo-Catholic group Affirming Catholicism) as opposed to Liberal-Evangelicals, or simply “Liberals” [15]

Francis and colleagues' scheme of what makes an Evangelical, and Catholic is tied up in his questionnaire material which is not available in the published papers.

From my preliminary research into Churchmanship, including trips to seven churches representing a range of churchmanship, interviews with a “Liberal” Theologian, Keith Ward and “Liberal Catholic” Vicar and media commentator, Giles Fraser, and nine interviews with religious affairs correspondents, and conversations with Simon Barrow of Church think tank, Ekklesia, I have formed a sense of contemporary Churchmanship that broadly informs the following observations of the existing research, and which I wish to keep in mind and test in my ongoing research.:

Firstly I have a concern that insufficient attention has been paid to the practices and beliefs involved in “Evangelical “and “Catholic” identity. Although this is made easier with various efforts made to define evangelicalism and various statements of faith used by Evangelicals, this is not the case with Catholics. Secondly I note that studies have tended to look at where people place themselves “on the candle”.[16]  Daniels (1968) offers us a scale bookended with the opposites of, for Evangelical, allegiance to the Bible and, for Anglo-Catholic, and allegiance to the church. But we have the problem that the Church of England doesn’t have dogmatic orthodoxy like the Roman Catholic Church. In fact as Towler and Coxon (1979)  point out, the church of reference for many Anglo-Catholics is the Roman Catholic Church. Towler and Coxon (1979 p107) suggest that we use the type of “prayer book catholics”. This however seems a very one-dimensional category. Thirdly I have a concern that we are unclear about what we mean by liberal. Is it to mean a moderate/ centrist position or is it to refer to the New Theology/ Modernist/ “liberal theology” position proposed by Ransom, Bryman, and Hining? Fourthly I consider that there has been a lack of acknowledgement that the Charismatic tendency is vastly more prevalent in Evangelical circles and that a large amount of Charismatic evangelical liturgical material and literature from Alpha, and from the New Wine network, which co-ordinates churches with similar ethos. The Anglo-Catholic Charismatic network lists 8 churches (http://www.anglocatholiccharismatic.org.uk/ ). The partner churches of Holy Trinity Brompton, the Charismatic Evangelical church where Alpha originated number 13 alone, and New Wine the organisation that co-ordinates charismatic evangelicalism in the UK, which is not limited to Church of England churches, but which emerged out of Anglican Charismatic Evangelicalism numbers 900 of which approximately 70 per cent are Anglican[17].

And finally I believe there should be an acknowledgement that there is a formality/ informality distinction that goes beyond the Catholic/Evangelical distinction..

From the above points we might immediately propose an increase of Randall’s axes from 3 to 4: Evangelical-Catholic; Theologically Liberal- Theologically Orthodox; Formal – Informal; Charismatic – Non charismatic.

And as we saw above, Randall dismisses the interest groups in the C of E as merely representing another level of extrinsic membership above that of the Church itself, which he says is not what he is interested in. His interest is analysing clergy according to an objective churchmanship scale and then making comparisons between churchmanship and other characteristics. (Randall 2005 p57)

My interest however is in perceiving churchmanship as  points of belief coalescence that shape public discourses and opinions – and that is exactly what the church interest groups do – and to match these to beliefs amongst the leadership and then to compare these to the intrinsic religious beliefs/ social attitudes/ church habits  of the congregations.

And so for these purposes it will be highly instructive to study the beliefs and characteristics of those groups both insofar as they are reference points for the media/new media/ leadership/ activists and as they give anchor points for the various points on the possible scales/dimensions, used in an orthogonal scheme. I intend to analyse these groups through a combination of discourse analysis of their materials and by interviewing leading figures about what they believe their group’s central beliefs are and what they think the other groups’ central beliefs are.

To clarify, in addition to giving us indications of what these groups stand for, and where they stand with regard to existing typologies, this exercise should reflexively inform us about  the key beliefs  involved in being an Evangelical, Catholic, Charismatic or Liberal. And this should help us refine our objective scales of measurement for congregations (here I am proposing a slightly amended form of Randall’s (2005) scheme, to be fully explained in a written essay in progress) This is especially likely to be true of the centrist position which Francis and Lankshear (1996 p13) suggest may constitute up to 60% of Churches.

In summary, churchmanship studies over the last 150 years have argued that the C of E can be broken down into more groups than High Low and Broad. Each of these groups can be sub-divided and on top we have groups such as Charismatics and Modern Liberals who do not naturally fit into the scheme.

Analysts have both used orthogonal “dimension” approaches such as axes with Catholic (authority in Church) to Evangelical (authority in Bible), Liberal (use of reason) to Orthodox (use of authority), or Charismatic to Non-Charismatic on them (e.g Randall 2005 p 61); and “labelling” approaches that endeavour to characterise the different parties in the Church.

In my research I intend to use both approaches. “Labelling” to understand the major organized groups that, de facto, exist and the orthogonal scheme that can be used to describe these groups and people who fall outside of them.

 

 

 

 

Part 3) Research Proposal: Methods and Work Plan

 

Table 1, below, explains my working thesis chapter outline, with the methods used to achieve each stage of the research particularly highlighted. A discussion of how these plans might be implemented, and problems that might be encountered, appears after.

 

Table 1

 

Provisional thesis Chapter Outline is as follows:

Ch 1 Introduction

Research question – How does the concept of Churchmanship relate to perceptions and self perceptions of the C of E at national leadership, local leadership and congregational levels. Explore further the perceived “crisis” in C of E.

An outline of how the various secularization and related theories might interpret the current situation and what predictions they might make

Other virtues/vales of this study ( as per in sections one and two of this project report)

Ch 2 Literature Review:

Scope and context of study. A summary of  current knowledge/thinking in secularization studies, relevant related studies  (such as religion and civil society, or Church of England studies),religion and media studies, church history.

Ch 3 Methodology

Empirical Study 1: Media perceptions

i)                    Discourse analysis – papers, broadcast media, new media

ii)                  Analysis from semi-structured interviews with members of the broadsheet religious affairs community

iii)                Focus group analysis

Empirical study 2: Analysis of Churchmanship categories at local leadership level.

i)                    Discourse analysis from new media/Church press/ Church materials to see where boundaries of church sub-cultures are.

ii)                  Analysis from semi-structured interviews amongst leaders and opinion formers of Church groups representing sub-cultures.

iii)                (brief) mention of the proposed refinement to Randall’s (2005 p61) orthogonal churchmanship scheme to provide datum points for empirical data

Empirical study 3 Analysis of churchmanship categories within candidate churches .

i)                    Explanation and justification of who the churches are/ why they have been chosen and why this represents a suitable cross section to allow observations/ findings to be made about how the concept of churchmanship works/applies at this level. These churches will represent a cross section of the types if not the numerical composition of the church.

ii)                  Empirical study within the churches.(to include leadership and congregation)
(i) Participant observation
(ii) Questionnaire
(iii)Semi-structured interviews

Ch 4: Findings from study 1

The media story – one of division.

An analysis of how the media depicts the Church of England, which is anticipated to show a picture of a Church divided into three camps, split over matters of authority, teaching on sexuality and the place of female leadership.
Consideration of media production biases, and empirical study amongst production communities and audience communities, to establish how the media engine drives public/ common perceptions, and to question whether the way in which stories are generated leads to necessary simplification.

Ch 5: Findings from study 2

The composition of the Church – a church of how many sub-cultures ?

This will include various analyses that establishes, 1) recent church history, 2)  a history of how the traditions have developed in the Church, 3)  an identification of the traditions as currently practiced,  4) an analysis and comparison of existing classifications and typologies of churchmanship. 5) an argument for why I wish to use both church interest groups and an independent classification scheme in my study, including clarification of what is involved with both.


Ch6 Findings from  study 3

The longest of the chapters, which will be subdivided according to church, with a section analysing the results at the end

Ch 6 Findings from other sundry other sources, tbc, and not yet included in the methods section.

I may supplement my findings with information from media figures, commentators and prominent figures within the church that have occurred during the research phase.

Ch 7 Conclusions:

Overall – how the category of churchmanship can be seen as helpful in analyzing the Church of England at national, local leadership and congregational levels.

What were the public discourses of the churchmanship groups and their concerns and objectives according to analysis and how did they match the way in focus groups actually understood them? How did these match the churchmanship sub-groups of the church as identified through interest groups at local leadership level? How do congregations fit into the pattern, how might we understand their “churchmanship”, and how, in our sample, do they relate to the “churchmanship” of their church ?

What do our findings  tell us about public media discourses as indicators of secularization? Are they biased, or accurate and are the characterisations they make about churchmanship groups reasonable? Are churchgoers really split according to churchmanship beliefs or can differences between the successes of different groups be explained by other factors?

 

 

 

So far I have completed one substantial of empirical work which looked at media discourse analysis according to production communities. This was presented at the BSA sociology of religion study group on 31^st March 2009, and is available on request. Of particular interest to me in presenting this piece of work was to get feedback from the academic community on the strengths and weaknesses of my approach. G Lynch (Birkbeck) and J Beckford (Warwick), commented that the research was interesting and original, but that it would be important to see it in context with both the proposed discourse analysis and even more particularly the proposed focus group study that would demonstrate the impact of these public discourses.

I have also become aware of other media discourse analysis work currently being undertaken. A team headed by K Knott, in Leeds is looking at certain print and broadcast media representations, and J Blain at Sheffield is supervising a PhD project that looks at broadcast representations of religion in the media. As with the Leeds project I will be conducting quantative, qualitative and focus group analysis. As my time frame of analysis is long – 10 years – there needs to be an iterative process of refining the keyword codification, and newspaper sample. This will be guided by the research already undertaken. I already have empirical research to show what newspapers have an interest in the Church of England as establishment, and which authors were involved. I also have begun to refine the codification process by appreciating what keywords to identify to isolate whether a story is, for example, concerned with schism, and which churchmanship keywords to look for. The process is made considerably easier by the way in which the online archive, Nexis, presents data, and using desktop search programs to pick up key words on the downloaded data.

The way in which new media tends to be archived online means similar analyses shouldn’t present substantial problems. In fact the interactive nature of “new media” gives the advantage of having data on the impact of the media built in. My supervisor, David Herbert has already conducted one substantial “new media” study, and I will be discussing this with him for methodological advice. Broadcast media, may prove more problematic in terms of gathering and codifying data. I shall be contacting those involved in such studies for advice on their experiences

Regarding my research amongst opinion formers and leaders of churchmanship groups, I intend to conduct semi-structured interviews of a similar length to those conducted with newspaper journalists. The purpose of these is to provide an academically sound characterization of the churchmanship positions of all the main groups to which members of the church might belong.  I have already conducted two pilot interviews (Keith Ward  of Affirming Liberalism, and Giles Fraser of Inclusive Church), in which I presented to them my characterization of their position and those of the other possibilities, and asked for them to comment. These provided interesting data but I feel that possibly I could have left more space for them to comment more generally and freely on the place of churchmanship groups within the framework of the Church In other words those interviews may have been too structured and closed. The church group characterization that these interviews are intended to generate is to form part of my two part churchmanship classification system. The first part is by tribe/group/party, and the other is using an orthogonal scheme similar to Randall’s (2005 p 61).

These proposed semi-structured interviews with members of churchmanship groups (prominent figures in groups such as Reform, Forward in Faith, Affirming Catholicism etc) will, in all likelihood, comprise my next piece of empirical research. The media aspects of my research have no particular time pressures on them, but the relationships with the churches with whom I have started links need to be kept live, and a methodology for how to categorize and finally select the churches, is a necessary precursor to that stage of work.

A list of churches with whom, I currently have a relationship (i.e where I have been granted access, and with whom I have discussed my project) is available on request. I developed relationships with these churches during an extensive period of networking amongst people connected with the Church, and am still refining my selection process in order to give as representative a sample as possible. There is, for example, no “centrist” church or churches, in my working list and the Liberal Anglo-Catholic church that I refer to is led by such a singular personality that it is questionable how well it relates to any churchmanship type(The shortlist selection of the churches is intended to be broadly as typologically if not numerically relateable to the Church at the macro level as is appropriate to an ethnographic study).  The last part of the selection process will be a process of “church selection” justification to academic, think tank and church contacts with whom I have built up a professional relationship during the course of this project.

 My local church and congregational studies will probably be the final and certainly will be the most detailed part of my empirical work. This work will include semi-structured interviews with key members of the church and questionnaires. The success of these will however be dependent on my relationship with the church, and I am ever mindful of the need to maintain relationships – to this end I attend churches in my shortlist where possible, and make efforts to network in Church circles. These structured pieces of empirical data gathering will be used as part of general “Verstehen” approach, as a participant observer[18]. Following Cicourel’s four way scheme of participant observer types, it is my strategy to occupy the ethnographic stance of participant-as-observer (V Cicourel, Method and Measurement in Sociology p 41) Although I have a strong affection for the Church, and Christainity, I am, outside of this project, not a regular churchgoer, and therefore cannot claim the insight of an “insider”. I have, however, been immersing myself in the Church affairs, and my background as a former Religious Studies teacher and my degree in Christian theology gives me an advantage over a complete” outsider”.

Participant observer ethnographies have proved successful in Church congregation studies including James Stevens’, Worship in the Spirit (2002), which looks at Charismatic worship in the Church of England, and James Heards’s PhD thesis (2008) which looked at the Alpha course. Both studies give a detailed evaluation of the theoretical and methodological issues related to applying this ethnographic style to their research and the particular problems they encountered (Steven 2002 p37-54 Heard 2008 p87-106) and I will be looking closely at these and other examples prior to engaging in this activity. Heard has kindly offered to give me the benefit of his experience of conducting congregational studies as has Helen Cameron whose “Studying Local Churches” (2005) is one of the few guides in this field.

The approach of mixing interviews with ethnographic observations was also used successfully in Georgina Born’s study of the BBC, Uncertain Visions (2004).

The number of “formal” visits I will be making to the churches hasn’t been considered yet, nor the system of codification that I will use.

The formulation of my interview structures and questionnaires will attempt to match congregation members intrinsic “churchmanship” (if any, and according to a scale) to the extrinsic churchmanship of the church they attend. In light of research completed ahead of this part of the study the precise focus of my interviews will no doubt change. But I predict that I will be looking at issues of concerns on certain key issues of sexuality and female leadership, in keeping with current disputes; broader social concerns; how much the respondents occupy a solely religious or religious/secular integrated world; factors that influence parishioners interest in the church, such as religion, community and childcare; and the ways in which parishioners attempt to pass their religious tradition on.

The degree to which I can make definitive statements about any individual churchmanship group will of course be limited by the sample numbers I shall be working with (which are small, in keeping with my ethnographic approach). In this regard I have explained how I intend to ensure that my example churches are as broadly representative and relateable as possible. Clearly with the sample sizes involved I will not be attempting detailed descriptions of each churchmanship category but rather seeing as far as possible how the concept is used and is useful in analyzing the Church. Thus I will not be characterising  Evangelicals or Liberals as such, but rather making comment about how the concept of churchmanship seems to be useful at the various organisational levels. If, as may well be the case, my sample indicates that a particular churchmanship group behaves in a particularly interesting way, or that members were attracted to a church for a surprising reason other than churchmanship, this will indeed make for interesting reading. Such findings will however be cause for further investigation rather than be conclusions in themselves.

Steven makes an interesting observation in his ethnographic study of Charismatic worship (Steven 2002 p37) about relating congregational studies in the micro to the macro. He says he follows the lead of Bassey[19] in highlighting the importance of the quality of “relateability” as opposed to generalizability. Following this I might say, my sample cannot claim to be a microcosm of the Church, but that every Church must relate to a feature of churchmanship groups, or to a group perceived to have certain characteristics by generators of media discourse that is specifically being tested or investigated.

Throughout I will also be drawing on the experiences of my earlier work to inform the ongoing fieldwork. Both my review of churchmanship studies and media fieldwork, for instance, has raised an awareness that special attention should be paid to what we mean by liberal churchmanship groups; and that I should also be aware that a large percentage, possibly a majority of people in the Church of England do not want to belong to a churchmanship group, and are very possibly less vocal than those who do, especially at congregational level.

Finally, if appropriate, I intend to include sundry interviews and pieces of data that have come about during the course of the research where they help illustrate or amplify the objectives of the project.

 

 

Part 4) References :

 

 

 

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Sykes S (1987) Authority in the Anglican Communion        Anglican Book Centre, Toronto

Talbot M (2007) Media Discourse ,  Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

Telegraph Newspaper “Church prepares the way for women bishops”  Victoria Combe ( Telegraph 29/06/01); “Baptised Anglicans are now a minority”  Victoria Combe (26/09/2001);  “In 18 years, will there still be a Church of England ?” Jonathan Petre  (24/07/2003)  “Evangelicals threaten to ruin C of E over Gay Canon” Elizabeth Day (24/04/04);  “Church of England agrees to have women bishops within seven years” Jonathan Petre (13/07/05); “Church could think again over women, says Williams” Jonathan Petre (17/11/06);  “ Women Priests and their Continuing Battle” Rebecca Fowler (12/11/2007);  “ Church to impose “rule book” of beliefs”  Jonathan Wynne-Jones (Telegraph 03/06/07);  “The changing face of British Christianity” Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Olga Craig (26/12/07); , “Political blogs thrown centre stage by email 'smear' row” Iain Dale (11/04/09), 

Times newspaper: “Christians accused of politicking” (Ruth Gledhill 2/11/92)“Carey plays down danger of mass defections by priests” Louise Hidalgo, (16/11/92) “Middle Class Heaven “– Saturday Times Magazine 3/7/04 Hilary Rose; “Anglican Church attendance has stabilized” (reporter 23/12/07)    “Over half of Britons claim no religion” (21/2/08). “Church in Meltdown over gays and women”  Ruth Gledhill (16/6/08) “Gender Havens to avert split in Church” Ruth Gledhill (29/4/08 ); “Clergy plan mass exit over women bishops” R Gledhill (1/7/08) “Evangelical Christians sign up to a “church within a church” R Gledhill (2/7/08)  Leading Article: Crossroads for Anglicans – Rowan Williams must face down opposition on all fronts Leader (3/7/08);

Towler R and Coxon A.P.B (1979) The Fate of Anglican Clergy     Macmillan, London

Weber M (1930 reprint 2007)  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism     Routledge, London

Wilson, B  (1966)  Religion in Secular Society             Pelican, London

Wooffitt R (2005) Conversational Analysis and Discourse Analysis,     Sage, London

 

---

[1]              For clarification – my study is strictly on the Church of England, although I refer  to Anglicanism where I feel it to be the relevant point of reference for a Church of England matter or point of identity.

[2]              cf literature review section on churchmanship studies where we see that there at least nine groups representing sub-cultures within the church and that scholars have also grouped the church into anything up to nine groups.

[3]               Anecdotal evidence.

[4]               cf the literature review of churchmanship studies section in this report

[5]        This is linked to the work of Danielle Hervieu- Leger. (Furseth and Repstad 2006 p 59)

[6]        denominational allegiance, reported church attendance, attitudes towards the church, indicators of belief, and “some measurement of subjective religious disposition”

[7]               Currently the subject of a study by D Davies at Durham University

[8] cf Steve Bruce’s Nostalgic Images section in Religion in Modern Britain (1995) p. 45                                      

[9]               Perceived by RC in conversations with Simon Barrow of Ekklesia and Revd Giles Fraser of St Mary’s Putney and the Guardian

[10]             it was preceded by the Jeffrey John and Gene Robinson rows, the Windsor Report and the Tanzania Primates meeting

[11]             Particular outrage came from the Primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola.

[12]             Cf findings from correspondent interviews and churchmanship literature review

[13]             For Church histories see Moorman (3^rd ed 1980) Chapman (2006)

[14]             For instance in my interview with Ruth Gledhill 28-01-09

[15]      My interviews with Keith Ward and Giles Fraser in particular highlighted a common confusion between the concept of liberal theology and the position of liberal Anglo-Catholics who are liberal in terms of being open to a diversity of opinion, and may be socially liberal, but who are essentially theologically orthodox when compared to progressive liberal theologians. The picture is further muddied by the fact that a majority of liberal theologians seem to be Catholic in their liturgical preferences. It is also made more unclear by the fact that early anecdotal evidence would suggest that liberal theology/ modernism/ new theology as referred to in Towler and Coxon/ Ransom, Bryman and Hinings and Daniels, has declined to extremely low numbers.

[16]             The expression “On the Candle” is a colloquial use of a Catholic/Evangelical axis scheme whereby the top of the candle is meant to signify Anglo-Catholic and the bottom Evangelical cf Brierley 2006a pp49-67 “Halfway Up the Candle” (Churchmanship Analysis)

[17]             Statistics given to me over the phone from the press office.

[18]             The term Verstehen meaning understanding is used by Weber and is also used with reference to Weber by James Steven in his study of Charismatic Worship, Worship in the Spirit (2002).

[19]             M Bassey, “Pedagogic Research: on the relative merits of search for generalization and study of single events” in Bell et al, Small Scale, 103-22

An Analysis of the media portrayal of the "Church of England Crisis"

The C of E in the Media:

The purpose of the following analysis – an analysis of the media depiction of the current state of the Church of England as it struggles with internal dissent and conflict - is to establish a context for the qualitative/ ethnographic analysis of the Church of England that is to comprise the bulk of the research component of the project.

A number of studies and surveys[1] indicate that despite being part of the fabric of our establishment the C of E is an institution that has become increasingly remote for English citizens. The sociologist Steve Bruce famously accounts for this by claiming that the country is becoming increasingly secularized. Grace Davie favours the explanation that British citizens like to experience their religion vicariously by “believing without belonging”. Whatever the reason, all the statistics seem to point to a general decline in Church of England attendance, which according to the Times is now at 0.9 Million per week.

It seems reasonable as such to suppose that unless someone has an unusual reason to have familiarity with the institution of the Church of England – say because of an academic interest, or an actual involvement with the Church - it is probable that one’s primary source of information will be from its depiction in the media.

However a simple consideration of the way in which the media tells the story, seems to show that it, the media, is possibly guilty of simplifying a complex story into a simple narrative of Conservatives vs. Liberals[2]. Before asking whether this impression is something we should investigate further lets quickly recap how Church matters find their way into the media:

In recent years other than for isolated scandals, the actions of certain personalities, and fictional portrayals, this has been on account of the following issues:

1) Decline in attendance  2) The Church and Homosexuality, 3) The Church and the ordination of female bishops.

And in these stories we hear similar binary accounts – narratives of two opposing groups in the Church:

For example:

1)Liberal forms of Anglicanism are dwindling when conservative Pentecostal, Evangelical and African expressions of Anglicanism are growing

2)There’s an acrimonious feud between liberals and conservative with respect to attitudes towards homosexualty;

3) With respect to female ordination of bishops there is a row between liberals and traditionalists. (NB The fact that the traditionalists are predominately Anglo-Catholics and not conservative evangelicals is a distinction that is not always clear (and it’s worth noting that conservative evangelicals are also opposed) – the “headline” story usually appears as a battle between progressives and those that look to some form of orthodoxy.)

And, at least on the face of things (and it is exactly a deeper analysis that we will be conducting during this piece), this binary picture has a further spin – the coverage has a bias. One side, the “liberals” are reported as being progressives whose ideas are in line with the non-churchgoing “believing without belonging” public and the other, the “conservatives” are reported as reactionaries, with confrontational demeanours, who have a lot of financial clout.

This idea of bias is expressed in the article “We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News”, published in the Daily Mail 21/10/06 (albeit a conservative newspaper talking about a visual medium). And in Stephen Bates A Church at War  (2004 p 21) he quotes Rt Rev Wally Benn

“The views held in the media are not representative of where people are generally. There is a progressive liberal elite (Benn)

Even at the Daily Telegraph I (Bates) ventured, mindful of its editorial stance during the Reading Affair”. It’s interesting that even Bates seems surprised at the liberal editorial stance adopted by a right wing newspaper on C of E matters.

From this it certainly looks like there’s good reason to question whether the media picture is biased. But, is there reason to think that it is oversimplified?

Certainly it does seem on the face of it to be polarised, and it is widely acknowledged that it is in the nature of the media to simplify in order to create clear stark copy. However our main reason for thinking that the actual picture is might be more complicated comes from the fact that there are at least five readily identifiable “tribes” within the C of E, identifiable from the main pressure groups/ movements:

Below we will have a brief tour of the C of E by Churchmanship as identified by key organizations (pressure groups, think-tanks, “movements”,etc).

From conversations with Vicars (those from my candidate churches), media commentators, and think tank experts and from internet searches I have identified the following styles of churchmanship existent in the C of E along with the organizations that represent them.

1.     Conservative Evangelical:

Furthest to the right is “Reform” www.reform.org.uk Reform started in 1993 as a reaction to the ordination of women. Their theology is very biblical and “Reformed”, and now they are very active in their opposition to any moves within the Church that would be seen to endorse a homosexual lifestyle.

Prominent churches affiliated with Reform are St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Ebbe’s Oxford, and Emmanuel Wimbledon.

Occupying similar territory is the Church Society. Both this and Reform have been vocally opposed to Rowan Williams since his enthronement.

The group “Anglican Mainstream”, which runs a website and has smaller regional groups, notably Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream, was also set up in 2003 in opposition to the appointment of Jeffrey John as (Suffragan) Bishop of Reading. It occupies a similar position to Reform, although is slightly less overtly political in its language about the need to reform the church.

Both Reform and Anglican Mainstream may be seen as subdivisions of the Church of England Evangelical Council.

Prominent members of the CEEC are Wallace Benn, Bishop of Lewes and Richard Turnbull, erstwhile principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Both are widely considered to be “conservative hardliners”.

Oak Hill theological college is closely associated with the most conservative and “reformed” theology in the C of E.

Conservative Evangelicalism is sometimes called Classical Evangelicalism by those who want to make a distinction between the hard perception of conservativism that exists, and the compassionate but principled position that they see themselves as taking. Some taking this position ally themselves with the brand of evangelicalism found in the writings of John Stott, Rector Emeritus of All Soul’s Langham Place. Although Stott’s brand of Evangelicalism is more gentle than some of those found in Conservative Evangelicalism, All Soul’s Langham Place did find itself at the centre of some of the conservative evangelical politicking this summer, hosting the meeting 800 clergy and lay readers to sign up to the Gafcon inspired Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, opposed amongst other things to a “false gospel” of sexual immorality. Stott was described as “The High Priest of Evangelical Anglicanism” by the former religious correspondent for the Guardian, Stephen Bates, in his “A Church at War” (2004), in which he also goes to lengths to show how hard-line he is on the topic of homosexuality, and his opposition to its tolerance amongst Bible –believing Christians.

Some Stottites I have encountered (such as Jeremy Taylor of All Souls, Lindfield) are very sceptical of open evangelicalism, but are uncomfortable with what they perceive as the coldness, and legalism of Reform and  the Church Society, and feel most comfortable in terms of organization seeing themselves represented by the Evangelical Alliance (EA_- an alliance of evangelicals from free as well as established churches)

2.     Open Evangelicalism

If the John Stott/ All Soul’s style of churchmanship is different from the Reform/ Anglican Mainstream then it doesn’t really have a representative group within the C of E specifically, identifying itself more with the EA  – the next category in the C of E is Fulcrum, a think tank and group that represents “Open Evangelicalism”.

Open Evangelicalism although still Biblical and conforming to the David Bebbington criteria of Evangelicalism[3], tends to take a more interpretative approach to scripture. It is also more Ecumenical and Inclusive in its approach. It is associated with the theological college, Ridley Hall, Cambridge and the Bishop of Durham, N T Wright. It chose the National Evangelical Anglican Conference to announce itself, much to the annoyance of the organisers according to Stephen Bates (2004 p249), who claims that the hardliners, what he calls the Reformistas, called on other evangelicals not to recognise them as a group, nor to recognise open evangelicalism as a valid expression of Biblical Christianity.

3.     Charismatic Evangelicalism.

In recent years it has been easy to make a close association between Charismatic Evangelicalism in the C of E and Alpha. However as Alpha, although originating from the Charismatic/ Experiential/ Wimberesque tradition found in Holy Trinity Brompton in the early 90’s has become a tool used by all traditions found in the C of E (and also Methodism and Catholicism), it isn’t the organization that is most accurately identified with Charismatic Evangelicalism in the C of E.

That honour probably falls to a movement called New Wine. According to Wikipedia:  New Wine originated as a Christian festival, established in 1989 by Anglican clergy: Bishop David Pytches and the Rev. Barry Kissell. This was in response to the teaching of John Wimber and others that brought in a new wave of charismatic movement to the established church in the UK. It is now the largest network of Christians open to the charismatic movement in the UK, running a number of week long festivals in England, Scotland and Wales and currently attracting around 30,000 delegates per year.

4.     Anglo Catholic Traditionalism.

On the Anglo Catholic front traditionalists are represented by Forward in Faith which was set up in 1992 to oppose women clergy and then became a support group for “resolution c churches” – those who couldn’t accept the authority of a bishop in favour in women priests - under Provincial Episcopal Visitors, colloquially known as “Flying Bishops”. The issue of women clergy is THE issue for FiF, and although Wikipedia implies that they have turned their attention to the homosexuality issue, this, it appears to me is something that they have sympathies with the Conservative Evangelicals over, rather than being a campaigning issue of theirs. Stephen Bates (2004) ststes a suspicion that there are a disproportionate number of homosexuals amongst the ranks of the Anglo – Catholics (find !!!)

5.     Liberal Catholicism.

The liberal catholic tradition is represented by Affirming Catholicism and Inclusive Church. Affirming Catholicism was set up in 1990, as a liberal movement within the church in favour of female ordination and with a positive attitide towards the full inclusion of people of a homosexual orientation within the church. It is often said that Rowan Williams and Canon Jeffrey John started it, but it would be more accurate to say that they were there towards the beginning, in Rowan William’s case 1991. Inclusive Church similarly aims to promote the elements of reason in tradition, and the application of reason in biblical interpretation with more or less identical results in the issues of gender and sexuality. Inclusive church is particularly associated with St Mary’s Putney and its vicar Giles Fraser, and the Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee.

In the Church Society’s breakdown of  the Churchmanship of the 44 Diocesan bishops, it is noteworthy that many who might be categorised as Liberal Catholic by others, are down as Revisionist – i.e they wish to effectively start a new religion.

A sixth group has recently been formed called “Affirming Liberalism”, by professor Keith Ward, a former tutor of mine. It’s stated aims are to affirm and explore all aspects of the liberal tradition within Christianity – whether it be liberal catholicism from within the C of E or liberal protestantism from the continent.Ward famously considers himself to be “born-again” and places high value on the concept of revelation and the uniqueness of christianity which has been at the root of high profile disagreements with liberal catholics such as Don Cupitt (for instance Ward replied to Cuppitt’s “The Sea of Faith” with “The Turning of the Tide”).

There are other important pressure groups who do not neatly cover specific churchmanship groups most notably the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, and WATCH - Women And The ChurcH.

The presence of these groups gives us a good reason to question the more binary picture found in the press. Of course it may well be the case that there is a separation out into opposing camps taking place, at lease at some levels. However by looking ethnographically at churches representing the “tribes” as outlined above we hope to be able to see where there are clear allegiances and where things are a little more muddy.

There are particular reasons why getting a full and sophisticated picture of the composition and beliefs of the C of E both in terms of the leadership and also the congregations is of particular interest right now:

Because the established Church may be about to split.
Because it will inform about various religious subgroups, and their future within the future British religious landscape.
Because it will inform about the various secularization theories. For example –1) the identification of the liberal wing of the C of E with the “norm” in the press may indicate something about a link between unchurched believers and liberal churched believers as per Grace Davie’s “believing without belonging” thesis. 2) The financial power that the evangelical wing apparently wields (see references throughout the essay), coming as it does from the collection plate, tells us something about the “Shift to the right”, in post war “churched” behaviour described by both Bruce and Davie.

The Broad Narrative – the increasing tensions within the C of E

Over the summer of 2008 religious correspondents in the UK seem to have been have been working overtime. A search in the Nexis[4] database for the 90 days preceding July 7 throws up 962 articles matching the keywords Church of England. This has been the summer when the issues of homosexuality and women bishops have repeatedly thrown both the wider Anglican Communion and the Church of England into turmoil.

2008 is a Lambeth Conference (LC) year [5], a year when the spotlight should have been on the church for the right reasons. However this was the year in which a significant proportion of the bishops[6] who should have attended the LC instead felt so strongly about a situation where they perceived that that the orthodoxy of the Anglican Communion was being undermined that they boycotted it altogether, instead setting up their own rival conference in Jerusalem called Gafcon[7]

The result of this conference could have been worse for Anglican unity, but according to many commentators, not much[8].

With regards to the Church of England, the Gafcon announcement prompted 800 clergy and lay readers met at All Souls Langham Place on July 1st, in the first steps towards what the Times called a “church within a church”[9].

The Gafcon conference was the latest in a series of battles between liberal and conservative Anglicans over gay clergy[10].

To sum up, the three main things that have served to push the affairs of the Church of England way up the news agenda this year are:

1.     The Gafcon conference as the latest development in the row over sexuality

2.     The meeting at General Synod to decide whether concessions would be offered when changes were made to the churches legal instruments to allow women bishops

3.     The fact that it is a Lambeth Conference year which means that greater scrutiny is given to church matters – especially coming a decade after a particularly heated conference - in1998 fireworks blazed on the subject of homosexuality.

Between the first and second issues it may have felt for liberals who were already concerned their numbers within the church were dwindling[11], that they had a war on two fronts.

On the one (the gay issue) with conservative evangelicals, and on the other (women bishops) primarily with Anglo-Catholics, (often called “Traditionalists” in the press). When General Synod announced how the debates on women bishops would be conducted 1300 clergy including 11 bishops signed a letter saying they would actually leave the church if women were consecrated bishops.[12]

So, had did we get here? And how has the media told the story?

Regarding the “gay issue”, although the tensions in the C of E and Anglican communion have erupted all over the pages of the broadsheets this summer, their readers (with an ecclesiastical interest) will have seen the pressures mount for over a decade, with particular flashpoints over two gay clergy, Jeffrey John and Gene Robinson.

Alex Kirby in the BBC News online service neatly summarised the essence of the problem thus:

“Dr Williams may be the archbishop who has to accept that the circle can no longer be squared. Anglicans are so deeply and bitterly divided over homosexuality that even their famously broad church may now buckle under the strain of maintaining the pretence of unity. The conservative Anglicans say simply that the Bible requires gay and lesbian Christians to repent, and to have no sex life. The liberals say the church must interpret the Bible in the light of modern knowledge, accepting that people are born with their sexuality and should not deny it. Out of those polar opposites, even Solomon himself would find it hard to forge a united church.” (25 –2- 2005)

As hinted above the issue at stake only presented itself as one of sexuality – at a deeper level it was a fundamental disagreement about the role of scripture in faith.

On 20th September 2007 The BBC's religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott wrote that the dispute had proved so "devastating" because it hinged on fundamental differences of how strictly the bible should be interpreted. The article later quotes Rowan Williams:

Speaking in April, Dr Williams said: "It's not just about nice people who want to include gay and lesbian Christians, and nasty people who want not to include them.

"The question is, really, 'What are the forms of behaviour that the Church has the freedom or the authority to bless if it wants to be faithful to scripture and tradition?'

"That's the question which is tearing us apart at the moment."[13]

The first serious incident in the gay dispute came in 2003 when celibate homosexual Canon Jeffrey John was put up for the position of the (Suffragan) Bishop of Reading. Again the main players were the pro-gay liberals and anti-gay conservative evangelicals.

As Alex Kirby wrote at the time:

A gay bishop from Wales is facing a new attempt by conservatives and evangelicals to block his promotion to a senior church role. (20-6-2003)

The subtext was that Jeffrey John represented modern liberal trends in the church, and the conservatives the obscurantist tendency. And in our liberal press – and notably all our press is liberal compared to the cultural norms of parts of the “Global South”[14]on the issue of homosexuality[15] - the gay rights of Jeffrey John are the accepted norm.

Kirby’s piece goes on to explain that the “attempt” started with a letter from nine evangelical bishops and ended with protests with placards and evangelical churches threatening to use their financial muscle in the form of their substantial diocesan quotas, to force the issue to their advantage.

The significance of this is threefold. Firstly it is a declaration of intent to do battle, secondly it is a display of arms and thirdly it was a step towards the forming of strategic alliances, as the Gene Robinson crisis that would follow helped cement relations between C of E conservatives and “Global South” conservatives[16], that found ultimate expression in Gafcon.

The Gene Robinson controversy involved a divorced openly gay American Episcopalian being consecrated an Anglican Bishop in 2003, causing a wave of condemnation by evangelicals in Britain, and a tsunami in the Global South[17].

There has been controversy ever since. One response was the Windsor Report conducted by Robert Eames condemning the actions of the Episcopal Church (USA) in October 2004.

But Gene Robinson is still bishop, and the Episcopal Church of the USA have hardly apologised, so the instigation of the alternative “communion” the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA) this summer, is unlikely to be the end of the story; it is more likely the beginning of a new chapter.

The former head of religious radio programming for BBC Scotland Ian Bradley said in June 08[18] :

“The gay issue simply doesn’t look like going away, and it will continue to divide conservatives and liberals”

Former gay vicar, Michael Hampson in his book Last Rites (2006) suggests this is because there are so many homosexual clergy (p123). This view was portrayed to the public by the press, in its coverage of the incident on the June 15 2008 Rev’d Martin Dudley presided over a blessing of the relationship between two gay Church of England clergy.

The gay issue may run and run, but the row over women bishops looks like it is about to reach its conclusion:

The Anglo-Catholics represented by a pressure group called Forward in Faith will now have to make their minds up whether they are going to stay and lump it, or whether they are going to defect to the Roman Catholic Church.

The language in this row (as we shall see later on), has been slightly different from the quarrel over homosexuality– talk is of separations rather than schisms, and students of the church may argue that this has already largely happened with the creation of “Flying Bishops”, brought in to appease those opposed to female vicars. [cf Hampson 2006 102-103]

And although the coverage of this issue correctly typically puts “Forward in Faith” towards the top of the copy as the prime objectors, and the Conservative Evangelicals – who also are often opposed to women bishops[19] - lower down, one imagines however, that for those who do not follow ecclesiastical matters, the distinction is lost

Their eye may well just be caught by the headline indicating division between tradition and modernity – for example the front page headline in the Times on Monday 16 June 2008 was “Church in Meltdown over gays and women”. And in stories like the one mentioned above there seems to be a deliberate effort to lump the two issues together to provide a starker picture of a church split between two warring camps.

As the story progressed this year the distinction between the groups was made clearer for a while. Then after the announcement that concessions to the creation of women bishops have been ruled out, the terms traditionalists and conservatives seemed to collapse into one another[20] being high up the news agenda of both broadcast and print media speculation is mounting that a large number of Anglo-Catholics will defect to Rome, as was the case in 1994 when women priests were introduced.

Another speculation remains – what effect will this have on the divisions between evangelicals and liberals?

Above are the bare bones of the stories, as presented in our national media, about the disputes over gay clergy and women bishops.

A fuller account would also include reportage on the issues of increasing secularization in our country, and more on the growing Anglican power in, amongst other areas, Africa.

Below I will be looking in greater detail at both the headline and background stories concerning the C of E, looking at how religion and the church is treated in those media in a more general sense and finally what the particular agendas of particular media outlets are.

Some general observations that will be explored more fully below are:

That the bulk of the media image is created by the “quality” print media, who give an impression that the C of E is polarised between the “liberals” on the one hand and the “conservatives and traditionalists” on the other.
There is a split in the treatment of the C of E between the quality and tabloid print press.
The print press tends to associate liberal Anglicanism with being somehow more “mainstream” or in touch with the sensibilities of the nation, on matters of sexuality and sexual equality.
Television seems to be demonstrating an overall diminution of conventional religious coverage such as Sunday services or programmes like “Highway” that align them to the established church.
There is also an aversion to upsetting any specific religious sensibilities. In this regard we see little footage that looks at the Church head on – religious topics have usually to justify themselves as being part of some other ongoing debate, and discussion on the C of E tend to justify themselves in this way (e.g pre-existing debates such as the Da Vinci Code, American fundamentalism and Jerry Springer the Opera have all been used as “ways in” to religious discussion).
Within the context of general drama and comedy there seems to be still a continued portrayal of a gentle      nostalgic pastoral established church. An excellent example is the Vicar of Dibley.
There is a continued interest in ecclesiastical matters in Radio 4, and an absence of American style religious radio programming.
There is an explosion of religious debate in the form of Internet blogs.
There is a small amount of dedicated religious channels on BskyB – this is not however sufficiently significant to warrant attention here.

Treatment Of The C Of E In The Print Press

The first distinction to be made in how the print press has treated the big stories concerning the Church of England during the last decade is between the broadsheets and the middlebrow and red top tabloids on the other. Undoubtedly there is a distinctive difference in approach between the reporting of Church of England matters in the quality and tabloid press.

Although there is very little in the secondary literature on this one easy way of comparing the approaches is by putting in the keywords Church and England through the online archives of the various newspapers.

With the broadsheets (the Independent, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times) one finds in accordance with the stories described above, hundreds of hits on the subjects of gay clergy in general, and more specifically, the ructions over the appointment of Canon Jeffrey John as Bishop of St Albans, the row in the Anglican Communion over the appointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, the Windsor Report over this, the subsequent Tanzania Conference, the relative decline of the C of E attendance (and in particular in relation to Pentecostalism and Catholicism),  the issue of women bishops, and the votes in Synod over it, this years Lambeth Conference and Gafcon.

A similar search for the Daily Mail, shows much less coverage of these subjects and, in line with the papers general editorial concerns, interest in middle –England right of centre concerns such as white weddings in Churches, the Church in relation to mosques, and the Church and Church schools. The same is the case for the Daily Express.

With the Sun newspaper, the same keywords throw up a single story about the ordination of a former prostitute. A slightly wider search including the words Christian, Christianity and vicar shows the Sun displaying outrage at the marginalisation of Christianity in mid winter festivals and various stories involving “Sex Vicars”. [21]

Insofar as the discourses in the tabloid press don’t seem to shed much light on how churchmanship in the C of E is presented to us I shall be concentrating on the “broadsheets”. I will also be largely ignoring the internal Church press, because of its limited circulation

The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent report on the state and event of the Church approximately equally in terms of main stories covered. However whereas the first three give roughly equal space to the stories in terms of column inches, the Independent gives notably less. This seems to be part of an editorial policy to represent the paper as a secular, non-establishment publication. [22]

The Guardian is a generally considered to have a leftish agenda [23], and unsurprisingly its bias is towards liberal Anglicanism, as evidenced by the prominence they give to outspoken liberal Vicar Giles Fraser. Another indication of its position is given by this piece by Zoe Williams:

“First, the extremists, or evangelicals, or whatever else you choose to call the homophobes in the church when, for some reason, "bigots" won't do, say that homosexuality is forbidden in the Bible. Then the "liberals" (who would, in any other gathering, be called "the normal people") say that the Bible forbids or endorses a number of things that the modern world would deem acceptable or unacceptable (respectively). They often mention slavery in Leviticus.” Guardian July 8 2003

The Independent is a liberal newspaper that prides itself on having no political allegiance as such, however with its inherent liberal bias, its sympathies tend to be with liberal Anglicans on the issues of homosexuality and female equality. This is amplified by the fact that it is also something of a secular newspaper.[24]

The Times is described by Wikipedia as the UK’s “newspaper of record” – i.e it endeavours to be neutral. There have been criticisms of its neutrality since it was taken over by Murdoch[25], however that is still where it positions itself. However considering that the UK has one of the most liberal attitudes towards homosexuality anywhere in the world[26], and has equality for women enshrined in law[27], a political stance in line with the cultural norms of the country on these matters necessarily means having a bias towards the liberal point of view.

The Telegraph traditionally covers the church as part of their coverage of the establishment, and as part of the experience of their readership. Their readership is considered to be socially and politically conservative, and probably tend to be Anglo-Catholic, more than anything in their churchmanship (or at least having a preference for traditional churches and traditional forms of worship which are usually at odds with evangelicals who favour low church aesthetics – cf The Current “Save Our Churches campaign”. There is an old(ish) saying, that the C of E is the Tory party at prayer – and the image is of traditional churches with traditional church worshippers. That is not to say that some forms of evangelicalism, especially those that emphasise C/conservative morals, do attract people who are politically conservative)

However being socially and politically conservative in the UK in 2008 is not necessarily to be conservative on an international level[28]. The Conservative party currently has a prominent openly gay frontbencher[29], seven front bench women and a progressive in the person of David Cameron.

And the Telegraph is open to matters of gay and women’s rights.

Ruth Gledhill of the Times is an ambitious journalist who seems to push her stories forward through the editorial process, and one frequently finds that she has managed to get a story a much more prominent place in her paper than her colleagues have in theirs. RG own churchmanship is hard to gauge, although it is detectable that she considers Rowan Williams to be too vague [30].

I was at school with the former religious correspondent for the Telegraph, Victoria Combe, who was at least seemed to be a middle class liberal Anglican but given that she now writes for the Tablet I suspect was a RC. The current correspondent Jonathan Petres seems to be a liberal Anglican, or at least writes as though he might be. He is assisted by Jonathan Wynn-Jones the son of an evangelical vicar, who cut his teeth writing for the Evangelical “Church of England Newspaper”. Wynn-Jones, again follows an essentially liberal catholic editorial line.

The erstwhile correspondent for the Guardian, Stephen Bates, in a piece for the “New Humanist”[31] claims to have lost what little religion he had, and said that he found the subject best approached in political terms. Tellingly on the C of E he writes:

“When Rowan Williams was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002, he was sent excrement in the post by someone who believed he was dangerously unsound on doctrine, and hectored by conservative evangelicals who described him as heretical. He was eventually invited to lead prayers at a meeting of Anglican evangelicals, though only on condition that he did not preach. Even then they set aside a separate prayer area for those who could not bear to be in the same room as their own archbishop.
The presenting issue, of course, for what has become a struggle for power and control not only of the Church of England but throughout the worldwide Anglican communion, is homosexuality and the church’s attitude towards gays. Outsiders may have accepted civil partnerships, but the established church is tearing itself apart on the issue with quite extraordinary bitterness and rancour….
The fact that the outside world regards the division with bemusement and indifference, insofar as it takes any notice, and that the conservatives have received no secular support for their stand whatsoever, not even in the British tabloids, baffles them but only serves to confirm their belief that if the world is against them they must be right.

As you can imagine, this gets wearing after a while. What really surprised me was the mendacity and sheer nastiness with which the feuds were conducted and, of course, the certainty with which such people knew that God was speaking directly to them”

In his extremely comprehensive account of the divisions in the C of E from 1998 to 2004, A Church at War (which is comprehensive but unashamedly written from a liberal bias) he declares himself to be Roman Catholic son of a practising Anglican (father, married to an Evangelical (one hopes for the sake of their marriage she is a distinctly open evangelical), and with Evangelical children.

The current religious correspondent for the Guardian is a Muslim, Riazat Butt.

The Independent seems to not to keep a specific religious correspondent - a number of reporters cover C of E and religious matters.

Below I am going to look at the various big stories with examples of how they have been covered. Generally speaking it seems to me that the papers cover these stories thoroughly. However it is the nature of newspapers that the need always exists to make stark simple copy. This leads to a tendency to exaggerate difference, or at least to see it wherever possible, and to ignore some of the subtleties and nuances of the story.

1) How the Gay Issue has been reported in the broadsheets:

The Gay issue goes back further than the Jeffrey John row. Michael Hampson suggests in Last Rites that the Church has a disproportionately large number of gays in it (113). Given that there are scriptural passages that seem to directly forbid homosexuality, it is perhaps inevitable that this should be a particular point of tension

An early example of the gay issue in the papers is Victoria Combe’s (Telegraph) report on Bishop John Baker saying “Gays should be welcomed as Priests” (Tel 22/04/97). The article portrays him as a liberal who believes that the Evangelicals [32] use of the Bible as “inherently valid for all time” was unworthy.

In the run up to George Carey’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury, newspapers were eager to contrast his classical evangelicalism, with its emphasis on scriptural authority, with the churchmanship of potential successors. The then Archbishop of Wales, Rowan Williams was painted as a liberal who was favour of gay inclusion in the church. In fact he was portrayed as being frustrated at the Church’s slow progress regarding gay clergy (e.g. V Combe’s “Archbishop hits out at ban on gay clergy” Tel (21/07/2001).

However it was with the Jeffrey John incident in 2003, that the gay issue crystallized out a narrative of a church split between conservatives and liberals.

All the quality papers covered the furore surrounding the Jeffrey John, extensively. Notably the Telegraph, published an article “And suspicion begat spite, back stabbing and schism” (29/06/03). The narrative of this story was of the JJ incident snowballing into a pitch battle between liberals (and significantly Jeffrey John and Rowan Williams are identified with the liberal pressure group, Affirming Catholicism.), and Evangelicals. And it is significant that even in the conservative Telegraph the sympathies seem to be distinctly on the side of the liberals: Damian Thompson writes, for instance:

“Homosexuality is a growing obsession among fundamentalists and evangelicals around the world. Having compromised over issues such as divorce, these Bible-believing Christians have united in condemnation of the one sin that most of them do not feel tempted to commit. In evangelical circles, the only good homosexual is a "cured" one.”

Ruth Gledhill’s “The rise and fall of Dr Jeffrey John” warned of the financial ruin that Evangelicals could inflict upon the church if Jeffrey John and the liberals didn’t capitulate. Despite writing very neutrally on the issues of sexuality Gledhill, definitely seems to be portraying the Evangelicals as having the power and of spoiling for a fight: she writes:

IN A Church of England beset by crippling financial difficulties, the real threat by evangelical parishes to divert their substantial funds elsewhere meant that there was little alternative but to sacrifice Jeffrey John.

The evangelical parishes that opposed his appointment, not just in Oxford Diocese but throughout the Church, are among the wealthiest in the land.

Schismatic action by them to seek alternative oversight and to divert funds into independent trusts and away from the diocese, in response to Dr John’s ordination, would have brought the Established Church close to bankruptcy.

The ever-liberal Guardian even gave Giles Fraser space to write a postscript to the JJ event with an article provocatively entitled “Evangelicals have become this century’s witch burners”. In this piece he laments a tradition (evangelicalism) that had previously been so progressive[33], now becoming the “Nasty Party” and he implies that Evangelicals might have been responsible for posting excrement through single liberal clergy’s letterbox, and that there might be an Evangelical bishop who believes that homosexuality is caused by demons in the anus.

Later in the year Rachel Cooke from the Guardian’s Sunday outlet (Observer 21/12/03) wrote disparagingly of the evangelicals and their proportional ascent in the C of E in a piece entitled “The Sleek shall inherit the Earth”. This piece told a story of how through clever marketing, a cold and simplistic form of Christianity was usurping the Church.

It was at the end of 2003 that the Jeffrey John saga morphed into the Gene Robinson row. The telegraph put it bluntly “The Day the Church split” (04/11/2003), referring to the blanket condemnation from Africa and Latin America to the appointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. The Jeffrey John story had only involved England, but one imagines that conservatives from abroad were watching it with alarm. In his “A church at war: Anglicans and Homosexuality” former Guardian religious affairs correspondent Stephen Bates talks about Sandy Millar being onside with the Africans (he is now Bishop of Uganda despite still living in central London), and describes one particular angry sermon at HTB where he characterised the Episcopalian attitude to homosexuality as a “demonic ideology” (2004: p 28)

In it’s The Big Question: Is the Anglican Communion heading towards an inevitable split? The Independent (25/6/08) described Nigeria’s Primate Dr Peter Akinola position thus:

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, is one of the leading organisers of Gafcon. On the opening day of the conference he accused western Church leaders of apostasy and said there would be an "unavoidable realignment" of Anglicanism's power-base towards the conservative dioceses unless Canterbury did more to rein in the liberals

This is reflective of a position towards the Gene Robinson affair that he has had since 2003.

With the Gene Robinson affair sweeping in the larger Anglican Communion, phase two of the Jeffrey John controversy emerged with his new appointment as Dean of St Albans (April 2004)

Again there was financial threat coming from certain evangelicals[34] became an issue. Jonathan Petre wrote in the Telegraph “Evangelicals threaten to ruin C of E over Gay Canon” (24/04/04).

Eventually that issue blew over and Gene Robinson was again the focus. The quarrel over Gene Robinson has continued uninterrupted to the present day, where it is threatening to overshadow 2008’s Lambeth Conference.

Between 2004 and 2007, the church reacted to this ongoing dispute with the Eames/Windsor report (October 2004) and the Tanzania primates conference (Feb 2007) – Both the Windsor report and the primates conference gave the papers opportunities to restate the battle lines and numerous articles can be found with a simple internet search.

Given Gene Robinson’s past – previously married even though he knew himself to be gay – it is notable that even given their inherent liberal bias, that he seems to get an easy ride in the papers.

For instance Times 2 published an upbeat feature on him called “Gene Robinson on being a June Bride” (29/04/08), in which he was given a platform to share his excitement at his forthcoming wedding. This comes in contrast to the tone of articles such as Bishop of Liverpool’s for opposing gay cleric (Guardian 5/2/08), and Bishop ordered to have equality training over gay discrimination (Times 9/02/08).

Even for stories that have an intrinsic non-liberal bias such as Rowan Williams warning to the Episcopalian Church of the USA, for the sake of unity “Archbishop warns American Church leaders to curb their pro-gay agenda” (Times 15/12/07), one senses that the papers are still mindful, that in the United Kingdom the majority opinion is against discrimination on grounds of sexuality, and stories such as the above are invariably balanced by opinion pieces or letters such as “Liberal Anglicans will stay and fight” (Guardian Letters 21/1/08).

In the interests of Anglican unity the Windsor report called for repentance and a moratoria on the blessing of same sex unions in the Episcopal Church (USA), but the tone of many of the coverage has turned this round. In her piece at the tine Ruth Gledhill, gave the Episcopal Church (USA) plenty of scope to rebut the report:

: “As Presiding Bishop I am obliged to affirm the positive contribution of gay and lesbian persons to every aspect of the life of our church. I regret that there are places within our communion where it is unsafe for them to speak out the truth of who they are.” Church leader in gay bishop storm apologises for his role in schism 19/10/04

The way in which the gay issue has combined with the woman bishop issue has caused a response whereby the two stories are merged into one big “crisis” like “Church in Meltdown over Gays and Women”. (16-6-08)

And even though the gay issue brings in the wider Anglican Communion the papers are always keen to find a specifically British angle – for instance “Evangelical Christians sign up to a “church within a church” 2-7-08, in which Ruth Gledhill describes Evangelicals as planning a “putsch”.

The links between the Anglican Communion and C of E have also been made clear in explanation pieces in the Telegraph and Independent: “ Anglican Crisis Q and A (21/02/07) Telegraph”, and the Independent’s “The Big Question: Why is the Anglican Church facing a schism and can it be prevented ? (13/2/07)”, (and the more recent Big Question) which both also clarify the difference between the presenting issues and the underlying problem; the role and authority of scripture.

2 Reporting of Gafcon:

The breakaway Global Anglican Future Conference  (Gafcon) has been written about in all the broadsheets but perhaps most comprehensively in the Guardian.

In line with the liberal agenda of all the broadsheets, but particularly the Guardian, there is a palpable subtext that Gafcon represents intolerance and a resistance to post-enlightenment; ideas which should prevail.

For example, on Monday 30th June Riazat Butt responded to the Gafcon statement with an article “Conservative Anglicans form breakaway church in revolution led from the south”, and the next day, the same publication followed with three pieces, Archbishop of Canterbury hits out at breakaway Anglicans, The Evangelicals are moving in for the kill (Theo Hobson) and a piece by Bishop Tom Butler, “Anglican’s Militant Tendency must be resisted.”,

The coverage of Gafcon has also merged into the narrative of the growing power of African churches in the Anglican Communion. Ruth Gledhill’s interview with Peter Akinola (For God’s Sake July 5 2007), carried the standfirst:

Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria, the world’s most powerful Anglican leader, tells Religion Correspondent Ruth Gledhill that his conservatism is the true faith and that evangelism can combat Islamic terrorism

In the Telegraph’s “Anglican Church Schism declared over homosexuality”(19/6/08), the authors write:

The formal pronouncement of the schism is contained in an 89-page document titled “The Way, the Truth and the Life”, which…is supported by the heads of key African churches including Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda, who represent almost half of Anglican worshippers.

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, states in one section: “There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion.

3) Reporting of the Women Bishop debate:

One can trace back the media narrative on women bishops to that of women priests, and the lobbying that took place prior to 1994. However within the time-frame of the last decade, the coverage about the possibility of women bishops started about seven years ago when a working party was set up.

Despite the success of female vicars[35] it was clear that this was going to be divisive as that issue had been in 1994.

In 2001 Victoria Combe wrote “Church prepares the way for women bishops”  (29/06/01), in which she reported how the Bishop of Rochester[36] was preparing the ground for women bishops within seven years. In the same edition of the newspaper it was reported that the then archbishop of Canterbury George Carey was allowing “preparation for exclusive male Church”

Jonathan Petre  wrote: “THE Archbishop of Canterbury has given the go-ahead to traditionalists to prepare a blueprint for an all-male "Church-within-a-Church" if women are made bishops.

With the "encouragement" of Dr George Carey, Forward in Faith, the umbrella group for opponents of women priests, has set up a committee to "shadow" the working party paving the way for women bishops which is chaired by the Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Nazir-Ali.” (Telegraph 29/06/01)

Positive noises were made in the press in the intervening years between then and now. In 2005 the Telegraph wrote “Church of England agrees to have women bishops within seven years (13/07/05)” and the following year the Independent  had “Women Bishops could be here by 2012 says C of E” (9/7/2006). These optimistic articles were balanced with the occasional cautious article, such as “Church could think again over women, says Williams” (17/11/06) (Telegraph), and some alarmist ones such as “Hundreds of clergy will leave Church over women bishops” (12/07/05) (Telegraph). From editorial point of view one imagines, that there was an awareness that in the modern age, a lack of female bishops was a clear anomaly, but their absence for so long meant that the idea was still strange to many people. Maybe correspondents were urged to find copy that at the time that reflected the strong opinions that existed and attempted to find the pulse of the nation?

It has been during this year (with the crucial vote in Synod on concessions to objectors) that the heat has risen.

In April the Times reported about the mooted “Gender Havens to avert split in Church” (29/4/08). The language was of moderates versus traditionalists, but the “traditionalists” as a group not being well explained, and with the business of Gene Robinson featuring prominently in the text it is likely that for the casual reader, the distinction between “Forward if Faith” Anglo Catholics and conservative evangelicals is not clear.

The same is true of the front page headline article of Monday 16 June 2008  “Church in Meltdown over gays and women”, and the front page headline of Tuesday 1 July “Clergy plan mass exit over women bishops”, in which Ruth Gledhill writes “the Church’s moderate centre is being pressurised as never before by evangelicals opposed to gays, and traditionalists opposed to women’s ordination”, although later in the article a more explicit connection is made between Anglo-Catholicism and concern over women bishops.

Synod eventually voted on the evening of 7/7/08 to press ahead with female bishops with minor concessions. It is worth noting, and it is rarely mentioned in the papers, that within the Anglican Communion, the churches in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand already have female bishops.

It is also worth repeating that this story will either end with traditionalists adapting or breaking away, unlike the gay issue which has no obvious end point.

4) Reporting on the crisis in numbers in the Church.

In response to various polls that come out (e.g Christian Research’s Religious Trends censuses), the papers from time to time respond with pieces lamenting our loss of faith. For example in recent years the telegraph has reported Baptised Anglicans are now a minority (26/09/2001), has asked In 18 years, will there still be a Church of England ? (24/07/2003) and charted the overall change in the religious map in The changing face of British Christianity (26/12/07).

The Times has similarly told us that Anglican Church attendance has stabilized (23/12/07), but also that Over half of Britons claim no religion (21/2/08).

The effect of these stories can be to underscore the fact that the moderate “Vicar of Dibley” style church is failing, given that that is the version of Anglicanism implied in these articles. The impression that many may then get is that it is being taken over by a more hardline version of Anglicanism.

5) Varia

The Alpha Course which has proved itself sufficiently malleable to be adopted by churches as diverse as Methodists and Catholics is still seen by many to be proposing a biblical interpretation similar to Gafcon on the crucial is of sexuality. The success of Alpha has been written about, for instance in the Saturday Times Magazines “Middle Class Heaven”(3/7/04), where Hilary Rose makes the link between Alpha branded Christianity as gay intolerance.

Other indications of a growing intolerant religion come from reports about the  hardline Richard Turnbull of Wycliffe Hall [ Independent - The Man Who Says we are all going to hell (Turnbull) (25/05/07)], and on the proposal for a disciplinary structure to reunite the church, Church to impose “rule book” of beliefs (03/06/07) [Telegraph], and reports about the outspoken remarks from the Bishop of Rochester, whose remarks on Muslims suggest a hardline element [e.g Sunday Times Jan 13 2008 Muslim Britain is becoming one big no-go area]

It was, however remarks of a very different nature about Islam, that caused the single biggest C of E story for several years – the story many commentators dubbed “Shariagate”, and which even the Sun gave front page treatment with the Headline: Arch Enemy: Bash the Bishop.

It was remarkable how much press one talk given to a smallish group of lawyers and academics, making some liberal suggestions about the possible inclusion of elements of Islamic law into part of the broad range of instruments that are legally recognised, generated. No single religious story has provoked so much reaction. The question remains, does this tell us more about our views of Rowan Williams ecumenicism, or more about our reactionary nature when the question of Sharia law is raised?[37]

Portrayal of C of E on Television and Film

There is a tradition in straight and comic drama of portraying Church of England vicars in a nostalgic and mild manner.[38]

In recent years perhaps the most resonant portrayal of  the C of E on TV was BBC’s hit comedy, the Vicar of Dibley, now constantly rerun on satellite channels. Dawn French portraying one of the new breed of women vicars, still managed to perfectly capture a sense of nostalgia for passing rural English community cemented by a gentle liberal pastoral presence. The way in which the Vicar of Dibley was taken into the nations hearts as a symbol of the C of E is possibly reflected by the amount of column inches devoted to other Vicars of Dibley – people whom the press could compare her to.

Rebecca Fowler wrote in the Telegraph (12/11/2007), with respect to the plight of women vicars.

Perhaps the single greatest sign of acceptance was the success of The Vicar of Dibley, the comedy series in which Dawn French's Geraldine Granger ran a country parish. At its peak, it attracted 15 million viewers - an audience the Church could only dream of seeing in the pews.

Elsewhere on TV the tone has moved away from nostalgia to light parody. One thinks, for example, of the vicar on Dad’s Army, or various vicars represented in TV dramas such as Lovejoy, Inspector Morse or Midsomer Murders.

The occasions when the C of E has been openly mocked however are relatively rare, and tend to follow periods when satire in general is riding a high wave– for example the C of E came in for some particularly acerbic satirizing during the 80’s, in the satirical sketch show Not the Nine O’Clock News, which  followed one sketch – Are You A Gay Christian ?, the next week with Mel Smith portraying a liberal vicar asking the question, The Devil – is he all bad ?

Actual piety, however, seems to be something broadcasters are wary of attacking. Broadcasting in this country has long had a liberal bias [c.f Mary Whitehouse’s crusades of the 70’s and 80’s or “Confessions of a BBC Liberal” Antony Jay in the Times 12/8/2007]– it seems that they don’t want to go further by actually religion directly.

Besides common experience shows us that mocking mild belief or disbelief is met with much less opposition than mocking belief. As Richard Dawkins goes to great length to argue in the God Delusion, fear of the indignation, and possible offence caused by mocking belief, is one of the great taboos of our liberal society[2006 p 43]

Even Cliff Richard, whose open evangelical Christianity is regularly lightly mocked, even sniggered at by the public, is rarely directly mocked on television – rather it has been treated very seriously in the 131shows he has been listed as appearing on in the internet move database (IMDB).

And even Mary Whitehouse recently became the subject of a warm and sympathetic documentary on BBC 4 called Filth.

And it is possibly significant that when the archbishop of Canterbury is at his most liberal and tolerant he can be most vulnerable to attack. On 7/2/2008 when he made certain comments about Sharia law, showing an openness to Islamic practice he got a roasting from all parts of the media; on 9/6/2008 when Rowan Williams was interviewed by Emily Maitlis of Newsnight it was the tolerance of the C of E as opposed to the clarity and moral leadership of Islam which she attacked. This seems somewhat bizarre as it is precisely these qualities in Islam, that when they are taken to extremes that cause so-called Islamophobia.

A question worth asking may then be, are British broadcasters most comfortable attacking the C of E for being too liberal?;  and if so is this precisely because they themselves have a “liberal” bias.

In my own experience in trying to pitch religious subject matter to broadcasters in this country, the reply has always that they need a “way in” that doesn’t leave them exposed to criticism and offence. Examples of such routes in are extreme practices that are either native to another country – such as Christian Fundamentalism in America - or practices so far beyond what might be considered mainstream or acceptable that a safe distance is felt. And where this is not the case they tread carefully.

An example of where one might have expected a broadcaster to have given a religious subject a “harder time” [the Saturday Times did just that in their piece “Middle Class Heaven”] was ITV’s  – Alpha: Did it change their lives, presented by Sir David Frost.

Meanwhile broadcasters also seem less keen on what might be called “establishment religion” or religious worship programming which has declined between 1988 and 2008 (commentators frequently note that the the BBC’s founding father, John Reith was a devout Presbyterian Scot who was keen to maintain the country’s moral compass by a good dose of religion – things however have changed)

There are fewer services broadcast live on Sundays and ITV has lost Highway, its rival to Songs of Worship[39]. On Sunday mornings in the noughties, BBC’s broadcast service gave way to the Heaven and Earth show (that dealt with religious and ethical issues from either a non or multi partisan fashion) which gave way to the Big Issues – deal with social issues with representatives from different faiths asked to comment, and now to Sunday Life, and Sunday morning magazine programme with a slant towards issues related pieces.

Documentary output has remained reasonably consistent over the last 25 years and although documentaries rarely seem to interrogate the C of E head on, they do deal with large religious issues, frequently via a personality or big current issue.

Back in the 1984 the BBC commissioned Cambridge theologian, Don Cuppitt to make a multi-part documentary charting the progression of Christianity since the enlightenment amongst many academics, to a deliteralised version.

Thirteen years on there was a clamour amongst commissioners again to revisit the possibility of Christianity reconstructed, but this time inspired by a somewhat less scholarly source – the hit novel “The Da Vinci Code”.  Channel 4 commissioned The Hidden Story of Jesus and The Secret Family of Jesus from theologian Robert Beckford, and most recently The Secrets of The Twelve Disciples.

Robert Beckford is a distinctive black English Pentecostal theologian whom Channel 4 enjoy using because his background enables him to come to the subject of religion in the UK with the objectivity of being one step removed from the established church.

In his film God is Black (2003) he does approach the subject of the polarisation of the Church of England head on, but through a device that makes the approach simultaneously oblique.

The trope was that evangelical Christianity once exported to the Africa, was now being exported back. In the second half he interviews members of the conservative C of E pressure group Reform, whom he characterises as perceiving the Archbishop of Canterbury as the anti-Christ. Beckford also portrays Holy Trinity Brompton as having fundamentalist leanings.

Towards the end of the programme he visit liberals Churches and asks them how they are going to respond to the challenge of the rise of evangelical Anglicanism, and finally the programme commissions an advertising agency to see whether they could come up with ideas to rejuvenate the dwindling liberal Anglican tradition.

Aside from this film, the “meat” of Beckford’s other films has been a popular reworking of  literary and historical criticism presented as if they were hidden secrets, in much the same vein as the novel the Da Vinci Code. The BBC has done the same in films like “Did Jesus Die” and “The Lost Gospels”.

In recent months there have been some attempts by Channel 4 to deal with some marginal elements of orthodox piety in a fairly direct manner, but closer inspection shows that they have still been careful to distance themselves editorially.

The caption for Rod Liddle’s “The New Fundamentalists” on the Channel 4 website reads:

“ The mainstream of the Anglican Church, comfortably familiar to Radio 4 listeners and those who pray only at Christmas and Easter, is in decline. But the evangelical wing is growing. It is targeting and recruiting young people and, says and middle-of-the-road Christian Rod Liddle, could make up half the congregation of the Church of England within five years. “

Liddle is a well known polemicist and the viewer is well aware of his personality. Besides he was dealing with extreme and marginal cases and drawing conclusions that were presented as the musings of one man. More to the point his film doesn’t make anything like the same points as the caption – it simply shows what our culture currently considers deviant education such as creationism in lieu of evolution being taught in C of e schools. It certainly doesn’t equate liberal Anglicanism with mainstream Anglicanism.

In David Modell’s recent film “In God’s Name”, looking at the rise of Fundamentalism in the UK well – known ex Anglican (now Assemblies of God) extremist (Stephen Green) is portrayed to be in close working relationship with current Anglican Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship. The pattern was the same – Modell was present in his own film and the subject matter was unlikely to be supported by many.

Church affairs typically receive fairly cursory treatment on BBC and Sky news, as compared to the broadsheet newspapers. Exceptions, however have been Rowan Williams comments on Sharia law, which touched a nerve due to the hypersensitivity about Islam that we are currently experiencing; and also the recent Gafcon Statement and Women Bishops debate, which both wereprominantly featured on all the main news bulletins.

It is also notable that the issue of Women Bishops and “is the church sexist was discussed on 30/7/08 on the issues chat show “The Wright Stuff”, and one imagines there would have been similar discussions on it and gafcon on the Heaven and earth show, if it had still been running.

The portrayal of religion in film in the UK doesn’t inform us directly a great deal about the Church of England, but it does show an increasing secularization. The Life of Brian, had eight years prior In 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar caused more furore than Life of Brian (1979) than last Temptation of Christ (1989) than Jerry Springer the Opera (2001)

Taste and public sensibility have moved, and society has become palpably more liberal and secular.

Radio

Radio 4 still includes a live Sunday service and a daily service on its am frequency. Religious commentators get an outlet on Thought for the Day, and Start the Week and Midweek. In particular Roger Bolton presents an excellent programme on religious affairs on Sunday called Sunday. As might be expected Radio 4’s religious output is liberal and intellectual – in many ways the direct opposite of American religious talk radio.

In David Hendy’s piece in the New Humanist (October 2007) he notes how

Historically, much of the burden of implementing this (he is referring here to Reith’s desire for the BBC to maintain moral and religious values) religious mission has fallen most heavily on Radio Four – the direct descendant of the old Home Service. Not only does Radio Four represent the strongest through-line to the Corporation’s formative years; it also reaches its fortieth birthday shot through with threads of worship, in the form of programmes such as Daily Service and Thought for the Day. Consequently, the station has never quite dispelled – nor wished to dispel – what one of its producers described as a “vague moral Christian aura”.

But tellingly, as regards how liberal, Radio 4 religious output is, he then goes on to discuss how close Radio 4 has got to allowing Atheists to contribute to Thought for the Day, and implies that that day might not be far off.

A perception of Radio 4 religious programming is given in the Channel 4 online blurb about Liddle’s Dispatches programme, The New Fundamentalists

“The mainstream of the Anglican Church, comfortably familiar to Radio 4 listeners and those who pray only at Christmas and Easter, is in decline”

.

New Media / Internet

Perhaps it is appropriate to borrow from another web phenomenon, Wikipedia, to explain the importance of “blogs” in today’s media scene:

A blog is a website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video…

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries…

The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked. …

Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism, differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel.),

Over the last few years blogging has allowed everyone with a view the platform to share it. In practice this tends to be those with strong view. Prominent Church of England related Blogs include Thinking Anglicans - liberal, Inclusive Church – liberal, Ruth Gledhill – the Times, Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream – conservative evangelical, The Ugley Vicar conservative evangelical, Fulcrum – open evangelical, Anglican Mainstream – conservative evangelical.

It is notable that when news such as the Gafcon Statement was released it was the blogs that were the first resource for information and opinion.

Updates:

As this is an ongoing story, my intention is to revise the entire text periodically. Between revisions I am adding updates in bullet form in this section that will incorporated into the body text at the next revision.

Notably as the summer progressed the terms traditional and conservative were being increasingly used as blanket terms for “non-liberal”. One example of this is Stephen Bates piece in the Guardian on July 15th, “Church of England: Beset by liberals, hounded by conservatives, Williams needs a miracle to keep church intact”. Another is in Robert Piggott’s piece for BBC online of 29/07/08, “Oppose Gay Bishops, Anglicans Urged”, where he uses the word traditionalist to denote Conservatives opposed to Gene Robinson, whereas the term traditionalist, earlier in the year had been essentially used to denote the Anglo-Catholics opposed to female bishops.

One event that got an enormous amount of coverage was the heckling of Gene Robinson when he addressed St Mary’s Putney for evensong (July 13). It wasnoteworthy that the press had turned out in such large numbers and had a live satellite link van outside (Robinsons sermon was scheduled to be broadcast live on BBC news 24). The impression that the news coverage gave was probably that there was a greater degree of dissent than was the case. There were in actual fact only two protesters there – well-known extremist Stephen Green from Christian Voice outside and during the service, the motorcyclist who shouted “Heretic!” And “Repent!” before being ushered outside by the church wardens. However that bried incident was repeated on all the television news bulletins that night and was covered in all the major newspapers the next day – including the Daily Mail, who covered it in a very neutral fashion.
Two days later (July 15) BBC 2 ran a documentary calle Battle of the Bishops, in its “This World”, strand, in which reporter Ben Anderson, portrayed Conservative African Bishops as being not only out of step with British values but also resentful of what they consider to be an imperial attitude emanating from Canterbury.
It is also noteworthy that since Lambeth began, the right wing Daily Mail, who have been very neutral on female and gay bishops, insofar as they have reported at all have run two pieces showing a much more right of centre outlook on other aspects of British religious life. One was “Victory for Christian registrar bullied for refusing to perform 'sinful' gay weddings” 10/07/08, in which the sympathy was noticeably wuth the Christian registrar, and the other was  'Mosley ruling a dangerous threat to our morals', says former Archbishop’, 28/07/08, which was accompanied by an opinion piece congratulating George Carey for standing up to the court’s jusdgment that Max Mosley’s “sickening” acts be allowed to remain private.
On 7th August the Times published a front page “Rowan Williams: gay relationships comparable to marriage.” with a two page spread and a a leader inside, based on revelations from some letters sent in 2000/1 to a Welsh paritioner/ psychologist that demonstrated the journey he had made since the 80’s wherehe held a compassionate view based on orthodoxy to a position now, that runs at odds with the line he seemed to be towing at the Lambeth conference. This angered both liberals, who feeled that he was betraying his own conscience and them, and conservatives who felt that this showed that he was unfit to hold office.
Over the last three Sundays of August 2008 Channel 4 aired a programme called Make me a Christian: The following comments by the Telegraph’s Jonathan Wynn Jones on his blog, was reflective of much of the reaction found on the internet:
“What could have been a chance to provide a sympathetic exploration of Christianity is of course nothing of the sort - a lap-dancer, a Muslim, a lesbian and an atheist biker are among the volunteers and the lead cleric is the Reverend George Hargreaves, the leader of the right-wing Christian Party, who believes that the dragon on the Welsh flag is an evil symbol. Yeah, exactly.

Essentially this is Big Brother with a street-preacher thrown in for good measure.

The all too predictable result is another superficial examination of the distasteful nature of fundamentalist Christianity.”

He also makes the comment that Richard Dawkins got a much more intelligent treatment when he was seen debating with Christians on another programme, aired at a similar time, celebrating Charles Darwin.

Conclusion

The findings above concur with our original conjecture that we do have reason to believe that the newspapers do in fact paint a somewhat binary picture of the Church of England, that doesn’t match the five or six distinct groups with in the C of E, as represented by the various organizations discussed in the introduction.

Of course that may be the way things are, but it certainly gives us cause for further investigation. It is also noteworthy that the main players in the sexuality and gender debates, and the leaders of the churchmanship organisations are all leaders and activists, and the question of where congregations fit into all this doesn’t seem to enter into the media picture.

Are they represented, or even guided by the liberal media or is Wallace Benn right – is the liberal media an “elite” that fails to understand the pulse of the nation ?[40] . Do they understand or care about the different categories of Churchmanship? Are they drawn by certain churches with certain styles or are they geographically tied to a church and are prepared to like an individual vicar more or less.

By spending time observing leaders and congregations from a range of churches that appear to represent the varieties in style in the Church of England I hope to make an attempt to understand these issues better.

[1] For example the graphic attached in pdf format, that appeared in a recent edition of the Times newspaper.

[2] And this is not restricted to the media. Robbie Low wrote in comment to the Mind of Anglicans (part of the Christian Research Cost of Conscience Survey)- Two Churches

“What has emerged from the results of this survey is the final exposure of two separate churches co-existing uncomfortably within the bosom of Anglicanism. One is essentially credally orthodox and committed to the historic and Apostolic mission of the Church. The other is wrapped in the garments of Christian language, but has only the most tenuous grasp of the central teachings of the faith. It is no surprise that liberalizers are tempted to distort or ignore the Word of God to achieve their political agenda in the Church but the degree to which this is revealed here is truly shocking”. This idea of Two Churches is also heavily implied by the Gafcon Statement:

The first fact is the acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the Anglican Communion of a different ‘gospel’ (cf. Galatians 1:6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel.

[3] It seems both conservative and open evangelicals would agree with David Bebbington’s description of what evangelicalism involves

-biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible (e.g. all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages)

-crucicentrism, a focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross

-conversionism, the belief that human beings need to be converted

-activism, the belief that the gospel needs to be expressed in effort

[4] Formerly LexisNexis – one of the world’s most comprehensive databases of newspaper articles

[5] Lambeth Conferences have been held on a (n almost) ten yearly basis since 1867

[6] 291 Bishops and  1148 Laity from 29 countries attended Gafcon. Bishop

[7] The Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference)

[8] cf Times 3July Leading Article: Crossroads for Anglicans – Rowan Williams must face down opposition on all fronts - the outcome of Gafcon was, in effect, the setting up of a communion within a Communion called FOCA – the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

[9] cf  “Evangelical Christians sign up to a “church within a church”” Times 2 July 2008

[10] it was preceded by the Jeffrey John and Gene Robinson rows, the Windsor Report and the Tanzania Primates meeting

[11] cf “Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour” Times May 08 2008

[12] cf “Clergy plan mass exit over women bishops” Times 1 July 2008

[13] It was seem that the question was never resolved to Gafcon’s satisfaction. In their statement they wrote:

The first fact is the acceptance and promotion within the provinces of the Anglican Communion of a different “gospel” (cf Galatians 1: 6-8) which is contrary to the apostolic gospel.

[14] The Anglican Global South is a grouping of twenty of the thirty-eight Provinces of the Anglican Communion derived from a meeting entitled the Global South Encounter in October 2005

[15] cf “An unheavenly silence on homophobia -Clerics at the Global Anglican Futures Conference have been slow to condemn violence against gay people. It's incredible, and unchristian” - Riazat Butt Guardian 23 06 08 – an example of discussions of the legal status of homosexuality in many parts of the Global South

[16]  Links between English evangelicals and African can be seen in the Channel 4 film, God is Black, Gafcon representation by Michael Nazir-Ali, and Wallace Benn, and the position of Reverend Sandy Millar as Bishop of Uganda.

[17] Particular outrage came from the Primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola.

[18] In conversation with myself

[19] (NB it is also the case that the conservative evangelical pressure group Reform is resolutely against women Bishops [http://www.reform.org.uk/pages/press/press.php] – it was STARTED as a pressure group as female ordination in 1993 - however the anti-woman Bishop campaign is spearheaded by traditionalist Anglo-Catholics who have a pressure group Forward in Faith [http://www.forwardinfaith.com/about/uk_kirk_days.html])

[20] See page 25 of this essay – the “updates” section

[21] curiously these keywords don’t bring up the Rowan Willams Sharia row, which received more coverage than any other single C of E related story

[22]cf Leading Article Faith and reason 19/10/06  “As a secular and liberal newspaper, The Independent naturally believes in the separation of the church and state. The disestablishment of the Church of England is a nettle that ought to have been grasped in Britain long ago.”

[23]  Cf wikipedia Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership

[24] cf Leading Article Faith and reason 19/10/06  “As a secular and liberal newspaper, The Independent naturally believes in the separation of the church and state. The disestablishment of the Church of England is a nettle that ought to have been grasped in Britain long ago.”

[25] Cf wikipedia

[26] cf wikipedia British attitudes towards LGBT rights and homosexuality are regarded as some of the most liberal in the world.

[27] Cf www.equalities.gov.uk

[28] cf The Right Nation Micklethwait, and Wooldridge 8-15

[29] Alan Duncan

[30] Her Blog in the Times is frequently personally critical of Rowan Williams liberalism, however she rarely endorses any particular orthodoxy

[31] The fact that Bates first reaction to leaving his post as religion correspondent for the Guardian was to write for the New Humanist about his experiences in itself tells us a certain amount about his and his papers’ position.

[32] Such as the then Archbishop of Canterbury – George Carey

[33] cf The Clapham Sect in the early 19th C

[34]  cf my notes on How Churches work for analysis of how the church is financed and notes on church pressure groups for a more precise take on who believes what – “Reform” evangelicals, for instance, would wish to withhold diocesan quotas, whereas “Fulcrum” evangelicals probably would not.

[35]  Rebecca Fowler wrote in the Telegraph (12/11/2007)Perhaps the single greatest sign of acceptance was the success of The Vicar of Dibley, the comedy series in which Dawn French's Geraldine Granger ran a country parish. At its peak, it attracted 15 million viewers - an audience the Church could only dream of seeing in the pews.

[36] This is an area where Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali has differed from other conservative evangelicals

[37] cf Head of Kirk backs Williams over Sharia row – Scotsman 10/2/08

[38] cf Steve Bruce’s Nostalgic Images section in Religion in Modern Britain (1995) p. 45

[39] Steve Bruce makes an analysis of this in his section “religious broadcasting” in Religion and Modern Britain (1995) p.55

[40]  Cf  Bruce 1995 p.67-70 and Davie Religion in Britain since 1945 (1994) p75-76

History Of the Church of England since the 1960's

These are the working notes for an essay I am trying to write on the recent history of the Church of England. I would be so grateful if anyone else interested in this area could flick through and give their impressions/ perspectives. The literature on this area is scant so say the least:

Notes for Recent History of the Church of England essay.

“The period between the end of World War II and the late 1950’s is commonly referred to as the “age of austerity”. (Brown 2000 170)

After the trauma of the second world war, Britain experienced a period of renewed discipline and moderation; and piety. One may account for this variously.Brown’s version is interesting. He puts it largely down to gender and the agenda to grow the workforce.

Recent times had been changing times for Britain’s women. During the war they had come out of the kitchens and worked in factories or as land girls. However, when the war was over the pressing need was for an increased birth-rate. This led to the growth of a domestic ideal. “God’s desire for chaste homemakers”, as it were, helped reinforce this.

All the pressures of social need told the women of Britain during the 50’s that their place was in the home. Girls being encouraged and encouraging others to be Godly made for going forth and multiplying

Brown writes:

“Traditional values of family, home and piety were suddenly back on the agenda…The churches benefited immediately. During the late 40’s and the first half of the 1950’s, organised religion experienced the greatest per annum growth in church membership………….The Billy Graham crusades of 1954-56 were especially noteworth, producing mass audiences in football stadia….Radio evangelism was also permitted in the early and mid 1950’s on BBC radio. Accompanying this was a revival of tract distribution and district visiting not witnessed since the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.”.

But times were changing.

In 1958 people were listening to Tommy Steele and Andy Williams. In 1959 the charts were dominated by Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. The hangover of the war was over and the greatest decade of social change in the 20^th century was about to begin.

The 1960’s-

Callum Brown sees the 60’s as the pivotal point in the secularisation of Britain. Whether or not that is the case, it was certainly socially the most revolutionary decade of the last century.

In terms of public mood and mores it is worth noting that it was the decade of the Lady Chatterley obscenity trial, the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion, the emergence of “women’s lib”, the boom of pop and youth culture, and the appearance of student rebellion.

Michael Hampson’s highly personal account of the history of the C of E, “Last Rites” characterises the 60’s as the era of “Kum Ba Yah”, and “Lord of the Dance”. It was a time of renewal and experimentation in keeping with the spirit of the times. There were new hymns, new liturgies and groups such as the Fisher Folk and the Jesus People.

Hampson makes a lot of the fact that in 1966 the first revision for 300 years came in the Service Book.

I am not convinced that that represented quite such a seismic change as he suggests. The leadership of the church during the 60’s was traditional but not conservative.

The archbishop of Canterbury was Michael Ramsey, a public school educated member of the High Church movement, who had a reputation for being humane and discreet. Ramsey presided over a time of numerical decline in the church, and also a time when the church was self-consciously trying to find its place and relevance in a rapidly changing world.

He was a builder of bridges and an outward thinking man, exemplified, for instance in his involvement in the ecumenical movement.

The church, as it always had had, had its low and high wings, but this was not a decade marked by differences between them. During this period it was change that was the thing.

Grace Davie (1994 33) characterises the C of E during the 60’s as a period of desire for relevance. She writes: “The churches – all too aware of the changes taking place around them – were looking for ways to adapt to and to penetrate this changing world. All might be well if the Church could shake off its image of belonging essentially to the past; it must, instead, present itself and its message as modern, up to date, and, above all, relevant…. The emphasis lay, precisely, in “breaking down the walls of partition between sacred and secular”

The spirit of the time was for relevance, modernity, and reform. The popularity for guitar based folk music was seized upon and co-opted into worship, the reorganizing of the parishes was planned.

Maybe the most significant “event” was the Bishop of Woolwich J A T Robinson publishing a slim book called Honest To God in which he put forward biblical scholarship and demythogization, - very academic and rationalist ideas - mainstream Anglican thought.

These ideas weren’t new. Robinson was simply adopting the dominant strand of post-enlightenment liberal protestant theology. Honest to God was published in 1963 and (according to Wikipedia) “aroused a storm of controversy”. The online encyclopedia goes on, “The book was controversial even before its publication, as an interview about it with Robinson in the Observer bore the provocative headline 'Our Image of God Must Go Some of the letters and articles for and against Robinson's views were published by the end of the year in The Honest to God Debate 

The book was almost universally condemned by traditionalists, but was hailed as a breath of fresh air by many liberals. However, not all liberals were in favour: many, including Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury thought that Robinson's theology was weak, and that he had only a vague understanding of many of the issues he attempted to bring into the mainstream.”

It is important to realise that until recently Charismatics and Evangelicals were two very separate groups, and especially so in the 60’s.

Michael Hampson talking about the later merging of the evangelical movements and charismatic movements in the 1980’s writes:

“The early charismatic movement was not a place of evangelical dogma – it was a place of authentic experience shared – but by the 1980’s it was looking for a framework, an established language, a reference point, even a respectability.Mainstream evangelicals, with a cultural and theological heritage going right back to the reformation, had initially been deeply suspicious of the new charismatic movement. …Nevertheless each side began to see potential benefits in building bridges”

The 1970’s

By the 70’s the hopes and ideals of the 60’s were expiring. The American hippie dream seemed to have gone up in smoke in Vietnam, the Beatles were breaking up, and the Tories were in.

The C of E may have achieved synodical government by 1970, a small victory in terms of the Church’s place within the establishment, but there were’t many victories to be had with the British public in the 1970’s.

It is important to see the history of the Church during the 70’s in the context of the history of the decade. If the 60’s was boom, then the 70’s was bust.

And it was as the three-day week was being introduced to combat industrial strife and power shortage, the country got its first Evangelical archbishop of Canterbury in more than a century.

Donald Coggan had a relatively brief tenure from 1974 to 1980, which marked a shift away from the liberal catholic mood of Ramsey’s reign. The 70’s is probably better known for another Bishop, ex England cricketer and evangelical David Sheppard was  appointed Bishop of Woolwich in 1969 and Bishop of Liverpool in 1975 – the enduring legacy of his ecumenicism is that there never was trouble between protestants and Roman Catholics in that city.

If the sixties saw the C of E ape secular and rationalistic thought, during the seventies deprivation and strife was fought by distinctively Christian Protestantism.

Grace Davie (p36) writes:

“As the 1960s gave way to a far less confident decade, it is not surprising that borrowing  from the secular became less and less attractive. So much that the pendulum began to swing again towards a greater emphasis on the distinctiveness of the sacred”

However what may have been achieved in terms of identity was not necessarily matched in terms of fulfilling social objectives or stopping the bleeding in terms of membership.

The 60’s saw a shift from a church that was getting more confirmation than the number of child baptism to a church that achieved only 20% confirmations to child baptisms and that dire situation persisted throughout the 70’s.(Brown 189)

The evangelicalism that now had a greater sway in the synod remained conservative on moral issues but was beginning to show more awareness in social terms.  Grace Davie writes the following about evangelicalism in the latter part of the twentieth century but to a smaller degree, it applies to the late 70’s:

“While most evangelicals remain conservative (or moderately so anyway) on moral issues – both individual and collective- increasing numbers are beginning to look  more critically at the social and economic agenda. A prominent leader in this respect is the Bishop of Liverpool (now deceased)”

“New religious movements, already apparent in the 1960’s became a focus of public as well as religious attention as at least some (though never all that many) people looked outside the mainline churches for spiritual satisfaction. Such movements …are in the main exclusivistic, standing “in some degree of protest against the dominant traditions of society and rejecting prevailing patterns of belief and conduct”At the same time house churches, sociologicallyif not theologically similar to at least to some new religious movements, began to multiply in response to a somewhat similar demand among Christians (usually evangelicals) for a greater distinctiveness in church life. (p37)

What the 70’s did see was an increase in the new phenomenon of , experience based, Acts-of-the-apostles-inspired charismatics.

Michael Hampson describes the church in the seventies in much more personal terms.

“From the entirely informal spirit of the FisherFolk and the Jesus People there had emerged a new independent exploration of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The gospels became a direct resource book for what it means to be a disciple. The Acts of the apostles and the writings of saint Paul became a direct resource book for what it means to be filled with the spirit”(71)

Later he goes on to explain what was involved in being a Charismatic

“Firstly there was prophecy. Someone would start talking like an Old Testament prophet….We all bought into a theology that said these were direct, specific, live messages from God for those gathered in that place at that moment….Then there was speaking in tongues. Saint Paul writes about the phenomenon at length…The sound is like someone speaking a foreign language…As in Acts chapter 2 most chose to believe that the sound was that of a real language..we were also content to believe that the language was sometimes that language of the angels, genuine but unknown on earth….A third phenomenon – interpretation – goes with a word in tongues. Alone it would resemble prophecy, but following a word in tongues it is said to be the same message, repeated in the vernacular.”

The 80’s

With the reification of greed and abandonment of socialist principles of the 70’s it has seemed to many that the eighties was the decade that either we abandoned God or he abandoned us. In terms of numbers the Church of England declined at roughly the same level as during the 70’s. Robert Runcie, a liberal intellectual became archbishop of Canterbury in 1980. David Jenkins became the Bishop of Durham in 1984, the year that the BBC commissioned the highly liberal theologian Don Cupitt to make the series “The Sea of Faith” in which he equated the history of Christianity with the gradual triumphing of rationalist liberal Christianity.

As we will see later, commentators such as Davie and Hampson make a lot of the consolidation and strengthening of the protestant traditions but I remember growing up during that period and it was the liberal protestant tradition that seemed to reflect the feeling of the majority of people who considered themselves to be more or less Christian.

It was as if the church elders seemed to have felt that the genie couldn’t be put back in the bottle. Britain in the 20^th century accepted not only science, but sociology, and textual criticism, and the necessity for different morality codes at different times in history.

The world had gained all sorts of knowledge that couldn’t be unlearned.

As I remember it during the 80’s there was a genuine attempt on behalf of the liberal intellectuals in the church to make the church more relevant by explaining that the church really wasn’t that far away from secular humanism. All the “mumbo jumbo” could be explained away.

In schools and colleges, the works of Paul Tillich and Rudolph Bultmann were being taught, and on Radio 4 David Jenkins would muse about the significance of the virgin birth. The problem, however was that the theological foundations were much too complicated to be explained to anyone outside of the sixth form or tertiary college.

Moreover it was too similar to secular values to seem worth taking any interest in. It seemed that the last thing the Church believed in was God, as refelected in comedy sketch shows like Not the Nine O Clock news. The Church seemed to many to be ridiculous.

And the liberal church was far from the whole picture. The religious Satire, “Life of Brian” caused controversy publically upsetting figures such as Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark.

Mary Whitehouse was doing her best, despite the church to uphold what she considered to be traditional, lowish church values of the British public.

But the real change during the eighties was the groundswell of protestant Anglicanism. Churches were recruiting with groups like the crusaders and through the Christian Fellowships of Schools and Universities.

Michael Hampson claims that the eighties was the time when Charismatics and Evangelicals joined forces (p?).

My recollections are that uneasy alliances were being formed but that the two groups still viewed each other with suspicion. And yet things were never that simple. In my town there were two churches. One liberal catholic with a small and elderly congregation, and the other, St Stephen’s, ostensibly low church. St Stephen’s had both charismatics and evangelicals – united on Sunday by the common purpose of being Christians who actually believed in the Bible and were bothered to go to a church. However, I am informed, that when the Charismatics went to their festivals like Spring Harvest they bemoaned the evangelicals dour non-experiencal, text obsessed faith. And some of the town’s teenagers were attending evangelical groups where they were warned against anyone who might challenge the absolute primacy of the Bible.

Meanwhile teenagers such as I were being taught in our religious studies A levels, by chaplains who were not just teaching Bible criticism but that fixation with the bible was not just essentially a form of idolatory, but in terms of regaining a lost purity, a nonsense.

One soundbite characterisation of the 80’s was that it had a new religion – money. That might not be true, but certainly the materialism of the age knocked a lot of the religious sensibility out of the collective consciousness.

The Last Temptation of Christ might have caused upset from religious groups in 1988 but probably not much more, if that, as The Life of Brian, a farce, had eight years prior.

The liberal catholic leadership of the eighties, was a bit like the later liberal democratic party, intellectually interesting but weak and ineffectual. Disagreement was also developing between the traditional anglo catholics who were against the idea of ordinating women and the liberals who were in favour.

This was not an issue for the protestants who hardly believed in ordination at all. However the row over the ordination between liberals and ango-catholics would change the power balance and politics of the Church to the point we have today where there is brink of schism.

1990’s

The ordination of women was agreed on in 1992, and the first women were actually ordained in 1994. The decision to ordain women vicars came a year after the Evangelical George Carey was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. The ordination of women caused such upset to the anglo-catholics that many of them left, defecting to Roman Catholicism. But more damaging was one of the concessions allowed to try to keep unity. This allowed for certain Parishes to elect to be under the control of an Anglo-catholic “flying bishop”, if they objected to their normal bishops support of women priests. This effectively created a church within a church who have since set up their own structures and are to all intents and purposes a separate church.

Now the Church was essentially an evangelical/ liberal split.

At the same time the evangelicals under Carey were becoming stronger. Carey may not have appointed many hard-liners, but he created conditions under which they could feel easy.

And of course with the “opposition” now being liberal-catholics rather than the more robust combination of anglo-catholics and liberal catholics, there was less resistance.

The other significant event in the history of the C of E during the nineties, didn’t happen here at all.

It happened in a small church in Canada. The Toronto Blessing Movement, was an “outpouring of the spirit” that occurred in the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church in 1994 which saw the Spirit move people to laugh uncontrollably (“so-called” Holy laughter) or stumble (“Holy drunkenness”).

The vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, sandy Millar, and his curate Nicky Gumbel went on a trip over to Toronto a couple of years after Gumbel had authored a course about Christianity called Alpha.

Gumbel and Millar were reinvigorated by “Toronto”, and the reborn Alpha course became the biggest recruiting sergeant in the recent history of the Church of England.

Statistics in 2004 showed that Alpha’s Holy Trinity Brompton attracted 6000 people each Sunday. At that point over 6,000,000 people had completed the Alpha course.

It was the Alpha phenomenon that really cemented the partnership between evangelicals and charismatics.

Tensions still existed between the two but together they could present unified front of biblically centred (as opposed to tradition –based) theology in the synod. Organisations such as the Evangelical Alliance (not limited to the C of E) have helped unity.

For those who read newspaper reports about the C of E and the disagreements within its ranks today, it would be easy to surmise that the argument is all about sexuality, particularly attitudes towards homosexuality.

The real difference however is about authority. For all their emphasis on the Holy Spirit, Alpha is still a biblically-centred interpretation of Christianity. The harder line evangelicals such as Reform (who want to go right back to the reformation), or Anglican-mainstream, have something closer to a fundamentalist position on the Bible. However for the liberals the Bible is a witness to a reality that needs to be interpreted through rational interpretation.

Michael Hampson describes the issue of homosexuality, and the Christian attitude towards it, as “The issue that won’t go away”. As a former gay vicar, one might expect him to take a particular interest in this. But this has become the single most visible and acrimonious row in recent Church history.

In 2003, the Church of England announced the appointment of Jeffrey John, living in a celibate domestic partnership with another man, as Bishop of Reading. Traditionalists within the Church were outraged and John eventually succumbed to pressure from the Archbishop of Canterbury (who had initially supported the appointment) and others to withdraw before he had been formally elected. He was appointed Dean of St Albans instead.

As a result of this and the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson in the US Episcopal Church (part of the Anglican communion), many provinces, primarily from central Africa, but a few in Asia and South America—representing half of the 80 million practicing Anglicans worldwide—declared a state of impaired communion with their counterparts. Minority groups in Western provinces have stated their opposition to what they consider unscriptural actions by the Churches of England.

There is another factor helping cleave the Church of England – the crisis in the finances.

Only a generation ago the clergy were funded almost entirely by ancient endowments. However in the final decades of the the last century there became no point in looking to parliament or the Crown for funds, so the church looked instead to lay people in the pews. These are known as diocesan quotas. Roughly speaking each church makes a contribution to the diocese, which then gets redistributed according to need. The wealthier parishes, which in effect means the evangelical churches, whose distinctive and certain message is the only growth area in the C of E, pay more.

Michael Hampson writes:

“With the financial situation so desperate – and those at the top in each diocese so fearful – those large churches with large quotas have a phenomenal leverage over the leadership. Only a handful have the fundamentalist clergy who could and would persuade their church councils to withold payment of quota, but a handful is all that it would take to bankrupt a diocese and leave the clergy unpaid. Limited witholdings have begun…the precedent is clear: the bishop now does what the fundamentalists say, or the whole diocesan edifice will come crashing down. You do not get much more direct control than that.

And that is why Jeffrey John is not the Bishop of Reading”

Current projects

We are engaged in two main projects at the moment. One is about the treatment of sex offenders by medical as well as psychological intervention, and we can't really talk about that, for contractual reasons.

The other project is a university research project as summarised in the following proposal:

One Church; two cultures – the composition and cultural reproduction of contemporary Anglicanism

Summary:

It appears from media reports that the Church of England is currently experiencing a time of great division. Controversies such as the ordination of openly gay bishops and women are very publicly pitting evangelicals against liberals. But although the two wings are roughly equally represented in the Synod, there is reason to believe that, in terms of membership and finances, one tradition, conservative evangelicalsm, is flourishing and the other, progressive liberalism, dwindling. Preliminary enquires reveal that although the church keeps records of numbers of communicants and on electoral rolls, no figures are kept on which parishes are of a liberal or evangelical orientation. One aim of the proposed study will be to analyse the composition of the Church of England, in terms of these traditions, at the same time as providing a critical interrogation of these categories. A second aim will be to assess the nature and extent of polarisation between these groups. A third will to examine the success and manner with which the two traditions seek to generate membership and to retain existing members.

Proposal.

The recent controversies over the ordination of openly homosexual and female bishops have caused certain key church figures to suggest that there are virtually two churches in the C of E right now; two churches at loggerheads with each other. However although the differences between the leaders of the respective traditions are public and widely reported, the views of rank and file members of the church are harder to ascertain.

This is in part because although the Church keeps records and statistics on membership and finances, none of these keep track of the respective traditions. Nor is there much data available on religious attitudes within the two traditions. In this study I am hoping to provide the first analysis of the C of E according to tradition; I will be looking to provide a statistical breakdown as well as an analysis of background and attitudes, and to provide some kind of account of how the two traditions pass themselves on.

As the current controversies throw the divisions in the church into sharp relief, I am hoping to use this to clarify the positions and attitudes of certain key members of the church. From my experience as a journalist, I have spoken to many such persons and am well positioned to obtain interviews.

My experience so far has indicated that the two camps are becoming increasingly entrenched, particularly in their attitudes to the Bible – from which many other disagreements arise.

A more literal or more contextual approach to the Bible helps define what it is to be, respectively, an evangelical or liberal Christian. The process of definition or characterisation is made easier in the case of evangelicals as they tend to define their belief in written materials, and in statements of faith. The liberal tradition is less well defined and possibly less homogenous. But, we can reasonably expect Liberal Christians to be united around notions of social progression, individual subjective experience, a non-literal interpretation of the Bible, and the freedom of individuals to hold beliefs outside of an accepted orthodoxy.

(NB I am going to be careful not to ignore the existence of groups such as Anglo Catholics who do not quite fit the idea of a Liberal/Evangelical divide.)

The heart of this project is to find out in detail who comprise the rank and file members of the traditions.

I wish to know the size of the congregations and equally what sort of people make up their numbers, and what the dynamics are leading to one tradition fading and the other growing.

In terms of gathering data, I will be helped by the fact that most churches are readily identifiable as belonging to one tradition or the other. Simply asking in the parishes will start to bring in information and this can quickly be cross-checked with membership of groups like the evangelical alliance and Alpha, and information published on various websites.

This survey by parish will create a map of liberal and evangelical Britain. From this I will select churches that we think are representative of their area, in which I will distribute survey questionnaires. The survey will look at things such as age, background, and moral and religious beliefs. From this we hope to build up a more complex picture of the demographics of the competing traditions.

The final objective of the project will be to analyse how the traditions reproduce membership, and how successful are they.

The liberal tradition is, for instance, reasonably well represented in C of E schools, private education and colleges. Evangelism is better represented in clubs in schools and colleges; typically these groups are called Christian Union or Christian Fellowship and are linked to out of school groups such as the Crusaders, and evangelical festivals and events like Spring Harvest, and Green Belt.

One phenomenon I will pay particular attention to is the Alpha course.

Created in the 1990’s out of Sandy Millar’s and Nicky Gumble’s experiences in North America and particularly the Pentecostal, so-called “Toronto Blessing”, Alpha has become enormously successful.

Statistics in 2004 showed that Alpha’s Holy Trinity Brompton attracted 6000 people each Sunday. At that point over 6,000,000 people had completed the Alpha course. Although Alpha’s theology is classically evangelical, interestingly it is used by traditions outside of the Church of England and by liberal Church of England churches desperate to boost numbers.

Alpha uses many of the tools of modern marketing, something liberal churches seem reluctant to do.

Of course the word evangelism means spreading the gospel, and the notion of liberalism involves respecting the choice of others, and this will always influence the vigour with which the traditions pass themselves on.

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Church in Pub

This intrigued me. Set up by a school contemporary, it is an Anglican church, without a parish, that meets in a pub in Brighton.

Anglican split 'has become necessary'

....says Bishop of Rochester.

C of E links

Recent specualation on rift in the C of E - Sentamu in Ohio at conference on gay clergy.

Williams on Marriage.

These people have taken over the buildings of a public school near where I grew up - for "healing retreats and discipleship training". They have also bought the pub opposite which they are turning into a hotel for the general public - sans bar and avec bookshop. All very interesting stuff for those of us interested in patterns of religious behaviour in this country.

Believing without Belonging

Over the last couple of weeks it has been hard to turn on the tv without being confronted with a Da Vinci Code spin off; some more arch than others - ITV for example followed a group of devotees and skeptics around the sites of the book to meet with "experts" and then had the footage analysed by tv's favourite rent-a-shrink Raj Persaud.

We think the knowingness and self consciousness of such programmes to be a good thing that could usefully go further and try to explain why such an average book has hit the zeitgeist. Readers may know that we at Russcoff have a particular interest in the Church of England.

( especially we are interested in in the underlying trends/ theories on the causes for the increasing polarisation of the C or E - e.g the move toward secularisation, the backlash, and the various functions that the Church still fulfills for millions of nominal christians. We are looking to investigate the exect composition of the C or E in terms of those who self identify as evangelical and liberal, and to discover what nature the religiosity of both groups takes. We have blogged on the Alpha phenomenon )

but that doesn't stop us believing that the same things that we are interested in the C of E apply to the Catholic context of the DVC

We think that the Da Vinci Code resonated because it gave expression to a desire for there to be a kernal of truth to be found in the church once the superfluous mythology had been debunked.

We use those terms because they are the specific idiom of 20 century liberal theology. Another way of putting it is that people want to believe in a God, but they want to believe in one that connects to their thoroughly post modern world and in order to do that they need to have a reason to separate the core beliefs from the off-putting baggage.

This put us in mind of Grace Davies Religion in Britain since 1945, which espouses the notion of Believing without belonging.

Maybe that is exactly what many people are after now ? We are also particularly impressed with Steve Bruce's complex analysis of secularisation in Religion in modern Britain.

Like Davies, he looks at how secularisation comes from a complex reaction to the modern or if you like post modern world. It seems a much more satisfying and rounded analysis than say Don Cupitt's infectious romp through liberal theology, The Sea of Faith.

Cupitt's anaysis seems to consign literalism and fundamentalism to the waste bin, categorising them, if we remember correctly, as obscurantist throwbacks to medieval thought.

Interestingly some sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman now suggest the exact opposite - they say it is supremely post modern.

Scientology watch - Katie Holmes' baby prompts rekindling of media interest

Since my experiences with the Church of Scientology there seems to have been a slight perestroika. Janet Kenyon Laveau who rattled the lawyers at the Times such that they printed the following correction -

The Times has issued the following correction...

The copy of Dianetics sold to Russ Coffey (8th paragraph) was pounds 5.99, and not pounds 15. The Dianetics seminar (11th paragraph) cost him pounds 19.35 and not pounds 27.60.

- has appeared on BBC's Heaven and Earth show, and Sky news defending the organisation. She also allowed The Observer into the Celebrity Centre in Bayswater. Sara Lawrence of the Independent was a little more sneaky for her information.

Let's Meet at my house, Sunday before lunch, God